LIIRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

R1VE«S10€ 


s 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 


THE  MEETING  HOUSE,   WARE,  MASS. 


_E  A  R  L  Y 
AMERICAN 
CHURCHES 

BY 

AYMAR  EMBURY  II 

author  of 
"one  hundred  country  houses" 

"modern    AMERICAN    EXAMPLES,"    ETC. 


Fully  Illustrated 


GARDEN   CITY  NEW  YORK 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 
1914 


ES 


COPYRIGHT,    19 14 
BY  EXDUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved,  including  that  of  translation 
into  foreign  langtuiges,  including  the  Scandinavian 


TO  HER 

WITH   WHOM,   IN  MY  MIND,   ALL  CHURCHES 
AKE  ASSOCIATED 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTIS  PAGS 

Introduction xiii 

I.    Church  Organization  in  the  Colonies   ....  3 

II.    Churches  of  the  Seventeenth  Century     ...  25 

III.  New  England  Churches  of  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 

tury       44 

IV.  Southern  Churches  of  the  Eighteenth  Century   69 
V.  Churches  of  the  Middle  States  During  the 

Eighteenth  Century 86 

VI.  Connecticut  Churches  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury  106 

VII.  Churches  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  in  and 

About  Massachusetts 122 

VIII.  Nineteenth  Century  Churches  in  the  South  .  144 
IX.  Nineteenth  Century  Churches  in  the  Middle 

States 160 

X.    Architectural  Development  as  Illustrated  in 

THE  Churches 174 

Appendix.     (Table   of   Early    American    Churches   in 
Chronological  Order) 185 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  Meeting  House,  Ware,  Mass Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

St.  Luke's  Church,  Smithfield,  Va 20 

Interior,  St.  Luke's  Church,  Smithfield,  Va 21 

The"01dShip"MeetingHouse,  Hingham,  Mass     ....  28 

Interior,  *'  Old  Ship  "  Meeting  House,  Hingham,  Mass.  ...  29 

"Gloria Dei, "Old Swedes' Church, Philadelphia, Pa.    ...  32 

Interior,  "  Gloria  Dei, "  Old  Swedes'  Church,  Philadelphia,  Pa .  33 

Old  Swedes' Church,  Wilmington,  Del 36 

Interior,  Old  Swedes'  Church,  Wilmington,  Del.        ...  37 

St.  Peter's  Church,  New  Kent  County,  Va 44 

Interior,  St.  Peter's  Church,  New  Kent  County,  Va.     .      .  45 

Old  North  Church,  Boston,  Mass 48 

Interior,  Old  North  Church,  Boston,  Mass 49 

Trinity  Church,  Newport,  R.  1 52 

Interior,  Trinity  Church,  Newport,  R.  1 53 

Old  South  Church,  Boston,  Mass 54 

Interior,  Old  South  Church,  Boston,  Mass 55 

King's  Chapel,  Boston,  Mass 58 

Interior,  King's  Chapel,  Boston,  Mass 59 

First  Church,  Dedham,  Mass 60 

Spires  of  Old  North  or  Christ  Church,  Boston,  Mass.      ...  61 

Spires  of  First  Baptist  Church,  Providence,  R.  1 61 

The  Meeting  House,  Farmington,  Conn 64 

Interior,  The  Meeting  House,  Farmington,  Conn.     ...  65 

The  First  Baptist  Church,  Providence,  R.  1 68 

ix 


X 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING  PAGE 

Interior,  The  First  Baptist  Church,  Providence,  R.I.   ...  69 

Bruton  Parish  Church,  WiUiamsburg,  Va 70 

Interior,  Bruton  Parish  Church,  WiUiamsburg,  Va.      ...  71 

St.  Paul's  Church,  Edenton,  N.  C 72 

Interior,  St.  Paul's  Church,  Edenton,  N.  C 73 

St.  Michael's  Church,  Charleston,  S.  C 74 

Interior,  St.  Michael's  Church,  Charleston,  S.  C 75 

Christ  Church,  Alexandria,  Va 76 

Interior,  Christ  Church,  Alexandria,  Va 77 

Pohick  Church,  near  Alexandria,  Va 78 

Interior,  Pohick  Church,  near  Alexandria,  Va 79 

The  Home  Moravian  Church,  Winston-Salem,  N.  C.      .      .      .  80 

Interior,  The  Home  Moravian  Church,  Winston-Salem,  N.  C.  81 

The  First  Reformed  Church,  Hackensack,  N.  J 84 

Interior,  The  First  Reformed  Chiu-ch,  Hackensack,  N.  J.     .      .  85 

Christ  Church,  Philadelphia,  Pa 86 

Interior,  Christ  Church,  Philadelphia,  Pa 87 

Tennent  Church,  near  Freehold,  N.  J 88 

Interior,  Tennent  Church,  near  Freehold,  N.  J 89 

St.  Paul's  Chapel,  New  York  City 90 

Interior,  St.  Paul's  Chapel,  New  York  City 91 

St.  Peter's  Church,  Philadelphia,  Pa 92 

Interior,  St.  Peter's  Church,  Philadelphia,  Pa 93 

"Holy  Trinity,"  Lancaster,  Pa 96 

Interior  of  the  Church  of  the  "Holy  Trinity,"  Lancaster,  Pa.  97 

St.  Paul's  Church,  East  Chester,  N.  Y 98 

The  First  Presbyterian  Church,  Newark,  N.  J 99 

Interior,  First  Presbyterian  Church,  Newark,  N.  J 100 

Meeting  House,  Springfield,  N.  J 101 

Interior,  Meeting  House,  Springfield,  N.  J 102 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS  xi 

FACING  PAGE 

St.  Mark's  Church,  New  York  City 103 

Interior,  St.  Mark's  Church,  New  York  City 108 

First  Church  of  Christ,  Hartford,  Conn 109 

Interior,  First  Church  of  Christ,  Hartford,  Conn 112 

Center  Church,  New  Haven,  Conn 113 

Interior,  Center  Church,  New  Haven,  Conn 114 

The  North  Church,  New  Haven,  Conn 115 

Interior,  The  North  Church,  New  Haven,  Conn 116 

The  First  Congregational  Church,  Lyme,  Conn 117 

The  East  Avon  Congregational  Church 118 

Interior,  The  East  Avon  Congregational  Church.      .      .      .  119 

First  Congregational  Church,  Guilford,  Conn 120 

Interior,  First  Congregational  Church,  Guilford,  Conn.  .  121 

The  First  Congregational  Church,  Bennington,  Vt.  .      .      .  122 

Interior,  The  First  Congregational  Church,  Bennington,  Vt.  123 
Interior,  The  Beneficent  Congregational  Church,  Providence, 

R.  1 124 

Meeting  House  Hall,  Dorchester,  Mass. 125 

St.  John's  Church,  Portsmouth,  N.  H 126 

Interior,  St.  John's  Church,  Portsmouth,  N.  H 127 

The  Park  Street  Church,  Boston,  Mass 128 

Interior,  The  Park  Street  Church,  Boston,  ]Mass 129 

The  Old  Meeting  House,  Lancaster,Mass 132 

Interior,  The  Old  Meeting  House,  Lancaster,  Mass.     .      .      .  133 

The  First  Church,  Lenox,  Mass 136 

Interior,  The  First  Church,  Lenox,  Mass 137 

The  First  Church,  Springfield,  Mass 140 

Interior,  The  First  Church,  Springfield,  Mass 141 

The  Meeting  House,  Deerfield,  Mass 142 

Interior,  The  Meeting  House,  Deerfield,  Mass 143 


xii  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING  PAGE 

The  Independent  Presbyterian  Church,  Savannah,  Ga.        .  144 

Interior,  The  Independent  Presbyterian  Church,  Savannah,  Ga  145 

The  Monumental  Church,  Richmond,  Va 146 

Interior,  The  Monumental  Church,  Richmond,  Va.  .      .      .  147 

St.  Paul's  Church,  Augusta,  Ga 150 

Interior,  St.  Paul's  Church,  Augusta,  Ga 151 

St.  Philip's  Church,  Charleston,  S.  C 154 

Interior,  St.  Philip's  Church,  Charleston,  S.  C 155 

The  North  Reformed  Church,  Schraalenburg,  N.  J.        ...  160 

Interior,  The  North  Reformed  Church,  Schraalenburg,  N.  J.  161 

Trinity  Church,  Newark,  N.  J 162 

Interior,  Trinity  Church,  Newark,  N.  J 163 

St.  John's  Chapel,  Varick  Street,  New  York  City    ...  166 

Interior,  St.  John's  Chapel,  Varick  Street,  New  York  City  167 

The  First  Reformed  Church,  New  Brunswick,  N.  J.      .      .  170 

Interior,  The  First  Reformed  Church,  New  Brunswick,  N.  J.  171 

The  Old  Dutch  Church,  Tappan,  N.  J 174 

Interior,  The  Old  Dutch  Church,  Tappan,  N.  J.      .      .      .  175 

The  First  Presbyterian  Church,  Sag  Harbor,  N.  Y 176 

Interior,  The  First  Presbyterian  Church,  Sag  Harbor,  N.  Y.  177 


INTRODUCTION 

Of  the  original  church  buildings  in  the  American  colonies 
there  is  none  now  standing,  and  but  a  few  of  even  the  second 
or  third  generations  of  structures  are  to-day  remaining;  but 
these  first  buildings  were  after  all  temporary,  usually  mere 
sheds,  and  we  do  still  possess  not  a  great  proportion  but  a 
very  considerable  number  of  the  buildings  which  the  different 
congregations  considered  of  definitive  worthiness  for  the 
worship  of  God.  The  number  of  these  has  unfortunately 
dwindled;  the  perishable  materials  of  which  many  of  them 
were  composed,  the  aspirations  of  imlettered  congregations 
toward  new-fashioned  things,  and  the  removal  of  population 
from  its  old  centres  have  lost  to  us  many  of  them,  and  while 
the  recent  deep  and  general  interest  in  the  things  connected 
with  the  formative  period  in  America  will  do  much  to  arrest 
the  general  destruction  of  these  buildings,  it  has  seemed  to 
the  writer  that  while  there  was  yet  time,  it  was  worth  while 
to  gather  together  into  one  volume  photographs  and  brief 
histories  of  those  that  still  survive,  both  because  of  the  in- 
trinsic beauty  of  many  of  the  buildings,  and  because  they  are 
the  foci  of  so  many  interesting  or  glorious  traditions. 

During  the  past  five  years  the  writer  has  made  a  very 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

careful  search,  both  in  person  and  by  letter,  over  the  entire 
eastern  portion  of  the  United  States  to  discover,  as  far  as 
it  might  be  done,  all  the  old  churches  which  were  worthy  of 
being  preserved  for  the  future,  and  while  it  cannot  be  pre- 
tended that  there  is  no  old  church  which  has  not  been  included 
in  this  volume,  it  can  be  said  with  some  certainty  that  prac- 
tically every  building  of  respectable  antiquity,  which  either 
possesses  architectural  interest  or  historical  traditions  of 
importance,  has  been  found,  photographed,  and  at  least  a 
part  of  its  history  discovered  and  verified. 

Certain  old  buildings  which  have  been  so  mutilated  by 
rebuilding  or  restoration  that  nothing  of  interest  remains 
are  not  illustrated,  and  a  few  other  churches  have  not  been 
shown  since  they  were  historically  uninteresting  and  of  a 
type  precisely  similar  to  some  of  those  included.  As  to 
the  period  covered,  the  writer  can  only  say  that  in  general 
no  buildings  which  were  architecturally  not  of  the  Colonial 
period  have  been  illustrated;  in  other  words,  very  many 
structures  built  from  about  the  year  1815  onward  which 
were  distinctly  examples  of  the  architecture  of  the  Greek 
Revival  have  not  been  included,  although  other  buildings  of 
even  later  date,  which  were  in  form  and  spirit  reminiscent  of 
the  earlier  work,  have  been  illustrated. 

An  exception  to  this  is  the  church  at  Sag  Harbor,  which  is 
shown  for  a  reason  which  may  be  thought  insufficient:  it  is 
practically  the  only  edifice  of  the  brief  "  Egyptian"  period 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

still  standing  in  the  United  States,  and  the  writer  has  thought 
that  its  unique  character  and  its  extremely  interesting,  if 
misdirected,  architecture  have  made  its  illustration  worth 
while. 

To  the  architect  the  principal  interest  in  these  old  buildings 
is  of  course  their  forms,  in  which  were  expressed  the  supreme 
efforts  of  the  artistic  genius  of  our  ancestors,  the  designers 
of  the  Colonial  period,  whether  we  call  them  architects, 
amateurs,  or  builders  who  were  inheritors  and  practitioners 
of  a  concrete  and  perfected  tradition  such  as  does  not  even 
to-day  exist.  Their  furniture,  their  dwellings,  and  their 
public  buildings  were  all  products  of  the  same  genius  and  the 
same  ideal,  and  to-day  we  are  seeking  and  finding  in  them 
sources  of  inspiration  no  less  satisfactory  than  the  best  that 
Europe  has  to  offer. 

Now  while  there  were  certain  differences  in  the  character- 
istics of  the  Colonial  work  of  the  several  portions  of  the 
country,  early  American  design  was  nevertheless  homo- 
geneous, and  while  the  dwellings  possessed  most  markedly 
the  differences  and  distinctions  obtaining  in  the  various 
sections,  the  public  buildings,  and  especially  the  churches,  ap- 
proached most  nearly  a  uniform  ideal,  and  it  is  a  rather  inter- 
esting fact  that  the  change  in  design  from  1638  to  1830  (which 
is  approximately  the  period  covered  in  this  book)  is  far  less 
noticeable  than  that  in  the  twenty-five  years  succeeding  the 
latter  date.     Nor  do  we  find  ecclesiastical  design  in  New  Eng- 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

land  marked  by  Puritan  simplicity  as  contrasted  with  aristo- 
cratic luxury  in  the  South;  if  anything,  the  balance  of  display 
lies  on  the  other  side,  and  probably  the  richest  and  most 
ornate  of  all  American  churches  were  Christ  Church  and 
St.  Peter's  in  Philadelphia,  located  midway  between  the  North 
and  the  South.  It  is  a  common  misapprehension  that  in 
New  England  the  meeting  houses  were  purposely  made  plain; 
the  reverse  was  the  fact.  Their  builders  constructed  them 
with  all  the  skill  of  which  they  were  masters,  enriched  them 
to  the  uttermost  of  their  knowledge,  and  not  only  will  a  com- 
parison of  the  churches  with  the  other  buildings  of  the  same 
period  prove  this,  but  we  find  it  expressly  and  repeatedly  .stated 
in  the  documents  and  histories  of  the  time,  though  in  neither 
the  design  nor  the  enrichment  were  the  common  symbols  of 
the  Christian  faith  included. 

The  literature  concerning  early  American  churches  is  ex- 
tremely meagre,  and  the  writer  has,  so  far  as  possible,  obtained 
his  information  from  historical  sketches  published  by  the 
various  churches  at  the  times  of  their  anniversaries,  sup- 
plementing the  information  thus  acquired  by  a  study  of  the 
few  books  on  the  subject.  Of  these  books  "The  Georgian 
Period  "  is  perhaps  the  fullest  from  an  architectural  standpoint; 
"  Historical  Churches  of  America,"  by  NeUie  Urner  Walling- 
ton,  is  concise  and  correct;  "Colonial  Churches,"  a  book 
published  by  the  Southern  Churchman  Company,  gives  an 
excellent  sketch  of  each  of  the  Virginian  churches,  supple- 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

mented  with  extracts  from  original  documents,  and  "Some 
Old  Time  Meeting  Houses  of  the  Connecticut  Valley,"  by  the 
Reverend  Charles  Albert  Wight,  has  proved  of  much  assistance 
in  writing  of  the  hmited  field  which  it  covers. 

In  addition  to  these  books,  the  author  desires  to  express 
his  appreciation  of  the  courtesy  of  the  clergymen  of  many  of 
the  churches  who  have  assisted  him  with  information  and 
advice,  and  also  to  many  architects  who  have  informed  him 
of  the  existence  of  interesting  old  churches  which  would 
otherwise  not  have  been  known. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

CHAPTER  I 

CHURCH   ORGANIZATION   IN   THE   COLONIES 

THE  Eastern  seaboard  of  North  America  was  colonized 
primarily,  for  commercial  reasons,  through  the  agency 
of  several  chartered  companies,  two  of  them  EngUsh, 
the  others  Dutch  and  Swedish.  The  colonists  procured  by 
the  companies  to  effect  the  settlements  were  men  actuated 
by  two  distinct  reasons:  the  first,  love  of  adventure;  and 
the  second,  a  desire  for  religious  freedom;  and  these  reasons 
must  have  been  very  potent  indeed  in  the  minds  of  these 
early  adventurers  to  induce  them  to  leave  the  comfortable 
civilization  of  Europe  for  the  discomforts  and  dangers  of 
the  new  country.  Nor  were  the  difficulties  which  beset 
them  unknown  or  underestimated;  there  is  no  place  in  the 
world  to-day  where  our  imaginations  could  conjure  up  for 
us  dangers  so  horrible  or  privations  so  severe  as  those  which 
the  colonists  did  not  fear  to  meet.  Their  ships  were  small 
and  frail,  to  them  the  ocean  was  peopled  with  horrible  mon- 
sters, and  the  new  land  inhabited  by  monstrous  and  ferocious 
savages;  but  with  a  firmness  of  mind  almost  beyond  our 
conception,  adventurous  soldier  and  religious  mechanic  ad- 


4  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

vanced  undaunted  to  meet  these  perils,  and  if  the  imaginary 
terrors  were  never  experienced,  the  slow  and  horrible  tortures 
of  hunger  and  disease  which  actually  beset  them  were  not 
less  to  be  feared  than  those  which  they  had  expected  to  find. 

The  eastern  shore  of  the  United  States  offered  no  easy 
road  to  wealth;  from  Virginia  to  Massachusetts  it  is  a  land 
of  cold  winters  and  fiercely  hot  summers ;  no  such  temperate 
climate  as  that  of  England  exists  along  the  coast.  Of  mineral 
wealth  there  was  little;  the  Indians  had  few  possessions  which 
made  their  conquest  worth  while;  in  trade,  furs  were  the 
only  commodity  which  did  not  have  to  be  sown  and  grown. 
Nor  was  it  a  land  peculiarly  suited  to  agriculture;  as  in 
every  new  country,  it  was  a  series  of  forests  and  of  swamps, 
and  we  who  live  now  have  no  experience  by  which  we  can 
measure  the  hardships  endured  by  the  early  settlers. 

In  Virginia  sixty  survived  the  first  winter,  more  than  forty 
perished;  of  the  Plymouth  colony  forty-four  died  out  of 
one  hundred  and  two;  but  with  a  persistence  unequaled  in  the 
annals  of  colonization,  settlers  continued  to  come,  and  with 
such  rapidity  that  in  New  England  twenty  thousand  were 
added  to  the  population  during  the  twenty  years  after  the 
first  settlement  at  Plymouth  Rock. 

In  the  calm  fortitude  with  which  they  endured  their  suffer- 
ings, the  religious  were  not  one  whit  behind  the  adventurous, 
and  the  pious  fanaticism  of  New  England  surpassed  by  very 
little,  if  at  all,  the  impressive  reliance  upon  their  God  which 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  5 

marked  the  Virginia  adventurer.  Each  uttered  his  enthu- 
siasm with  the  same  fervor,  and  each  harried  the  infidel 
Indian  and  the  dissenting  Christian  with  the  same  pious 
ferocity. 

As  each  little  community  was  established,  whether  in  New 
England,  or  in  Virginia,  or  in  New  York,  or  in  the  Swedish 
settlements  along  the  Delaware,  almost  its  first  act  was  to 
provide  foi  a  form  of  worship,  and  sometimes,  even  before 
houses  could  be  constructed  to  shelter  the  colonists,  a  rude 
church  building  was  erected. 

There  were  strangely  strong  resemblances  between  the 
beliefs,  the  forms,  and  the  systems  of  government  of  the 
various  Colonial  churches.  We  are  accustomed  to  contrast 
the  Puritan  of  New  England  with  the  Cavalier  of  Virginia, 
and  to  assume  that  the  one  was  simple  and  plain,  while  the 
other  was  aristocratic  and  ostentatious.  Whence  this  tra- 
dition arose,  the  writer  is  at  a  loss  to  know;  the  settlers 
in  Virginia  and  in  New  England  both  had  at  their  heads  men 
of  birth,  breeding,  and  station  in  England,  but  the  mass  of 
the  population  were,  in  the  beginning  at  least,  good,  hard- 
working, robust  citizens,  whose  value  was  measured,  not 
by  their  blood,  but  by  the  works  of  their  hands.  So  little 
was  the  display  in  aristocratic  Virginia  that  in  1639  the 
first  brick  house  at  Jamestown,  measuring  sixteen  by  twenty- 
four  feet,  was  spoken  of  as  *'the  fairest  ever  known  in  this 
country,  for  substance  and  uniformity'*;  this  was  thirty-two 


6  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

years  after  the  first  settlement,  and  it  may  well  be  doubted 
that  "simple"  New  England  did  not  possess,  so  long  after  its 
founding,  far  finer  houses  than  this. 

The  distinctions  between  the  Puritan  sect  of  New  England 
and  the  Episcopal  sect  of  Virginia  are  hardly  visible  to  the 
modern  mind  accustomed  to  disregard  non-essential  differ- 
ences; they  were  doubtless  all-important  then,  but  now 
seem  trifling  and  insignificant,  and  a  brief  survey  of  these 
two,  and  of  the  other  sects  which  settled  this  country,  will 
not  enable  us  to  comprehend  very  fully  the  grounds  of  the 
fierce  rehgious  hatred  which  distorted  the  minds  of  all  our 
early  colonists. 

We  have  rather  set  up  the  Puritans  as  the  ideal  of  American 
citizenship:  men  willing  to  lose  all  to  worship  God;  stern,  ex- 
cusably self-righteous,  men  whose  intolerances  toward  their 
fellowmen  we  are  inclined  to  look  upon  with  a  kindly  leniency. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Puritan,  Cavalier,  Dutchman,  and 
Lutheran  were  tarred  with  the  same  brush,  imbued  with 
the  same  deep  and  narrow  fanatic  spirit,  incapable  of  per- 
ceiving any  other  viewpoint  than  their  own,  and  absolutely 
unwilHng  to  even  associate  with  those  who  deviated  even  a 
hair's  breadth  therefrom. 

Any  one  who  has  made  even  a  cursory  examination  of  the 
early  history  of  religion  in  America  will  find  very  little  on 
which  he  can  look  with  much  pleasure.  There  were  but 
two  colonies  in  which  religious  toleration  of  any  kind  was 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  7 

practised,  and  these  were  curiously  enough  the  Catholic 
colony  of  Maryland  and  the  Quaker  colony  of  Pennsylvania, 
and  while  New  England  perforce  permitted  the  services  of 
the  Church  of  England,  and  Virginia  allowed  at  times  the 
Puritans  to  meet  openly,  both  ahke  persecuted  and  destroyed 
the  Catholic  and  the  Quaker. 

The  first  church  which  established  a  foothold  in  America 
was  the  Church  of  England;  on  Sunday  morning,  the  26th 
of  April  in  1607,  the  expedition  sent  out  by  the  Virginia 
Council  of  London  (otherwise  known  as  the  London  Company) 
entered  Chesapeake  Bay  and  landed  on  the  southern  shore, 
set  up  a  cross  at  the  place  of  landing  and  called  it  Cape  Henry. 
Two  weeks  later  they  decided  on  an  island  near  the  north 
bank  of  the  James  River,  forty  miles  from  its  mouth,  as  a 
place  of  permanent  settlement.  They  then  built  a  fort,  and 
in  the  centre  of  the  fort  their  church.  This,  the  first  Enghsh 
church  in  America,  Captain  John  Smith  described  as  follows: 
"When  we  first  went  to  Virginia,  I  well  remember  we  did 
hang  an  awneing  (which  is  an  old  saile)  to  three  or  four  trees, 
to  shadow  us  from  the  sunne;  our  walles  were  rales  of  wood; 
our  seats  unhewed  trees  till  we  cut  plankes;  our  Pulpit  a 
bar  of  wood  nailed  to  two  neighbouring  trees.  In  foule 
weather  we  shifted  into  an  old  rotten  tent;  for  we  had  few 
better,  and  this  came  by  way  of  adventure  for  new. 

"This  was  our  church  till  we  built  a  homely  thing  like  a 
barne,  set  upon  cratchets,  covered  with  rafts,  sedge,  and 


8  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

earth;  so  was  the  walls.  The  best  of  houses  (were)  of  like 
curiosity;  but  the  most  part  far  much  worse  workmanship, 
that  neither  could  well  defend  (from)  wind  nor  rains.  Yet 
we  had  daily  Common  Prayer,  morning  and  evening;  every 
Sunday  two  sermons,  and  every  three  months  the  Holy  Com- 
munion, till  our  minister  died;  but  our  prayers  daily  with  an 
Homily  on  Sundaies  we  continued  two  or  three  years  after, 
till  our  preachers  came." 

From  its  beginning  the  Virginia  church  was  an  integral 
part  of  the  Church  of  England,  technically  under  the  juris- 
diction of  the  diocese  of  the  Bishop  of  London,  who  had 
authority  to  select  and  send  clergy  to  Virginia.  The  support 
of  the  church  up  to  the  time  of  the  Revolutionary  War  was 
by  general  taxation,  being  from  thirty  to  sixty  pounds  of  to- 
bacco per  annum  for  each  adult  male,  but  because  of  the 
distance  which  separated  the  colony  from  its  theoretical 
head,  and  because  of  the  new  conditions  under  which  the 
church  was  compelled  to  work,  certain  new  rules  and  laws 
were  perforce  necessary,  and  since  there  was  no  bishop  of  the 
Virginia  church  to  make  these  laws,  they  were  made  as  lay 
laws  by  the  House  of  Burgesses.  Probably  the  system  of 
church  government  adopted  by  any  community  is  influential 
on  the  character  of  the  people,  and  on  the  buildings  which  are 
the  concrete  expression  of  the  creed  of  the  church  itself,  and 
we  find  that  while  in  theory  the  Virginia  colony  was  part 
of  the  diocese  of  the  Bishop  of  London,  practically  it  was  self- 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  9 

governing,  and  we  must  not  expect  the  buildings  to  be  of 
home  design. 

The  clergy  was  selected  by  the  bishop,  and  the  poor  average 
quality  of  many  of  the  clergy  of  the  Virginia  colony  after  its 
first  few  years  of  Hfe  was  due  to  this  fact,  since  the  parishes 
themselves  were  unable  to  select  precisely  the  man  they  needed, 
but  had  to  depend  upon  England.  Episcopal  ministers  were  in 
few  cases  men  born  in  the  colony  and  sent  to  England  for  or- 
dination; in  most  cases  they  were  sent  directly  to  the  parish, 
but  not  infrequently  English  clergymen  in  bad  repute  at  home 
came  to  the  colonies  to  seek  a  new  field,  without  having  been 
sent  at  all,  and  were  welcomed  because  of  the  dearth  of 
clergymen  of  any  sort.  There  are  even  reported  to  be  cases 
where  men  who  had  never  been  ordained  imposed  themselves 
on  the  colonists  as  clergymen.  The  parishes,  however,  were 
able  to  exercise  a  certain  amount  of  control  over  their  clergy, 
either  by  refusing  to  induct  unsuitable  men,  or  by  returning 
them  to  England  and  asking  for  others;  but  this  process  was 
tedious  and  slow,  and  not  infrequently  the  change  was  for  the 
worse. 

The  support  of  the  church,  to  pay  the  clergy,  to  construct 
new  buildings,  and  to  repair  existing  ones,  was  raised  primarily 
by  direct  taxation  of  all  the  colonists,  whether  these  were 
members  of  the  Church  of  England  or  Dissenters;  and  since 
there  was  neither  any  bishop  nor  any  responsible  church 
government  in  Virginia,  the  House  of  Burgesses  made  such 


10      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

supplemental  laws  as  were  necessary,  and  the  vestry  decided 
all  minor  questions.  This  single  government  of  two  institu- 
tions, church  and  state,  is  hardly  comprehensible  in  our  day, 
but  the  church  was  so  intimately  a  part  of  the  daily  life  of  the 
people  that  offences  against  the  church  became  offences  against 
the  people  as  a  whole,  and  because  the  church  was  an  estabhshed 
church,  any  offence  against  it  became  more  or  less  pohtical, 
and  no  attempt  was  made  by  the  Assembly  or  House  of  Bur- 
gesses to  discriminate  between  clerical  and  lay  crimes.  Ab- 
sence from  church  and  theft  were  both  criminal  offences, 
and  were  proceeded  against  in  precisely  the  same  manner. 
Thus  the  church  government  was  in  a  sense  democratic,  but 
as  the  Reverend  Joseph  Dunbar  has  wisely  said,  "It  was  the 
democracy  of  Athens  and  not  that  of  Rome,"  because  as  each 
parish  included  a  great  deal  of  territory,  the  general  mem- 
bership delegated  their  authority  at  an  early  date  into  the 
hands  of  a  self-perpetuating  vestry,  which  naturally  became 
more  or  less  aristocratic  in  character.  In  the  course  of  time, 
as  wealth  increased  and  became  concentrated  in  Virginia, 
worship  in  the  established  church  became  less  and  less  possible 
to  impose  on  all  the  inhabitants,  not  only  because  of  diver- 
gences of  faith,  but  because  the  church  buildings  themselves 
had  the  best  pews  reserved  for  magistrates  and  their  families, 
and  private  galleries  erected  at  their  own  cost  by  rich  men 
of  the  parish,  giving  an  aristocratic  status  to  the  buildings 
much  disliked  by  the  middle  class,  and  about  1740  permission 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  11 

was  given  dissenters  from  the  established  church  to  apply- 
in  court  for  a  license  to  worship  according  to  their  own  con- 
sciences, and  while  tithes  for  the  support  of  the  church  were 
still  compulsory,  tithes  paid  by  dissenters  belonging  to  a 
licensed  church  were  paid  to  the  support  of  this  church. 

At  the  time  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  the  church  volun- 
tarily dis-established  itself,  becoming  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  of  the  United  States,  and  its  method  of  govern- 
ment from  that  time  is  familiar.  Church  government  had 
been  so  completely  locahzed  that  the  one  difficulty  in  the 
orderly  course  of  its  progress  was  that  for  many  years  bishops 
of  the  Church  of  England  refused  to  ordain  bishops  in  the 
United  States,  so  that  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church 
finally  resorted  to  the  bishops  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  to 
continue  their  line. 

The  second  English  settlement  was  made  at  Plymouth  by 
the  so-called  Pilgrim  Fathers,  and  the  exact  amount  of  dif- 
ference as  to  belief  and  methods  of  church  government  be- 
tween them  and  the  Virginians  is  not  very  easy  to  define. 
English  Puritans  had  as  their  ministers,  in  probably  the  vast 
majority  of  cases,  clergymen  ordained  by  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, but  who  believed,  with  their  congregations,  that  certain 
reforms  within  the  church  were  necessary;  these  reforms  were 
apparently  chiefly  as  to  the  form  of  worship  rather  than  as 
to  the  doctrines;  their  belief  in  the  English  church  was  com- 
plete enough  so  that  William  Brewster,  an  elder  who  acted 


12      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

practically  as  their  pastor  for  ten  years,  did  not  administer 
the  sacraments,  and  they  regarded  the  Reverend  Mr.  Robin- 
son, an  English  clergyman  who  had  emigrated  to  Leyden  in 
Holland,  as  their  real  clergjmaan. 

When  the  Pilgrims  desired  to  immigrate  to  this  country,  they 
secured  permission  from  the  Virginia  Company,  just  as  had 
the  emigrants  to  Virginia,  and  to  secure  permission  they  stated 
to  the  Crown  in  1617  their  position  regarding  the  Church 
of  England,  declared  their  willingness  to  admit  the  authority 
of  the  King  over  the  bishops,  and  even  the  authority  of  the 
bishops  over  the  church  as  representatives  of  the  King,  al- 
though not  as  spiritual  authorities. 

One  of  their  first  acts  on  landing  at  Plymouth  was  to  erect 
a  meeting  house,  which  was  on  a  hill  near  the  harbor,  and  was 
a  large  square  building  with  a  flat  roof  on  which  were  mounted 
six  cannon.  The  Pilgrims,  however,  constituted  only  a  very 
small  proportion  of  the  New  England  Puritans,  and  were  the 
only  body  who  almost  from  the  first  advocated  separation 
from  the  Church  of  England;  the  later  immigrants  desired 
to  stay  in  the  church,  but  to  do  away  with  certain  of  its  forms 
and  ceremonies,  to  reduce  the  power  of  the  bishops,  and  to 
expel  from  the  church  people  of  "ungodly"  hfe. 

The  first  colonists  were  under  the  auspices  of  the  Virginia 
Company,  but  the  King  finally  granted  a  charter  to  the 
Plymouth  (England)  Company  to  colonize  Massachusetts 
and  the  adjoining  territories,  and  to  govern  the  same,  prac- 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  13 

tically  delegating  his  authority  to  the  governor  and  council  of 
the  Plymouth  Company.  When  these  oflScers  decided  to 
emigrate  to  New  England,  the  colony  became  practically  self- 
governing  and  semi-independent,  the  principal  distinction 
between  New  England  and  Virginia  arising  from  the  fact 
that  the  Virginia  colony  was  governed  from  England,  while 
New  England  was  governed  from  within  its  own  borders. 

There  was  apparently  at  first  no  intention  on  the  part 
of  the  Puritans  to  set  up  a  separate  church;  Francis  Hig- 
ginson,  one  of  the  first  two  ministers  who  came  to  New  Eng- 
land, said  on  leaving  England,  "We  do  not  go  to  New  England 
as  separators  from  the  Church  of  England,  though  we  cannot 
but  separate  from  the  corruption  in  it,"  but  it  was  not  very 
long  before  the  New  England  church  became,  in  fact  if  not 
in  name,  independent  of  the  Church  of  England.  We  find 
that  as  early  as  1629,  when  the  church  at  Salem  desired  to 
choose  a  minister  and  a  teacher,  the  Reverend  Mr.  Skelton 
and  the  Reverend  Mr.  Higginson,  both  ordained  ministers 
in  the  Church  of  England,  presented  themselves  for  the  posi- 
tions, and  were  requested  to  name  the  qualifications  desirable 
in  a  minister;  both  of  them  stated  that  two  things  were  re- 
quired, a  sense  of  fitness,  and  an  election  by  the  male  members 
of  "a  company  of  beleevers  joyned  together  in  covenante"; 
this  latter  qualification  being  of  course  totally  repugnant  to  the 
doctrines  of  the  Church  of  England. 

The   Reverend   Mr.  Skelton  was  elected,  and  was  recon- 


14  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

secrated  by  the  laying  on  of  hands  by  the  Reverend  Mr.  Hig- 
ginson  and  '*  three  or  four  grave  members  of  the  congregation." 
Thereafter  the  Reverend  Mr.  Higginson  was  ordained  as  a 
teacher  in  the  same  manner.  Now  while  it  continued  for  some 
time  to  be  customary  to  choose  ministers  who  had  been  pre- 
viously ordained  by  the  Church  of  England,  some  similar  cere- 
mony of  reordination  by  the  congregation,  assisted  by  ministers 
of  neighboring  parishes,  was  gone  through  with;  until  finally  the 
present  Congregational  Church  method  of  ordination  by  other 
ordained  ministers  was  substituted  for  it.  In  this  gradual 
manner  the  present  Congregational  Church  was  established. 

We  have  always  been  accustomed  to  regard  the  church  in 
Virginia  as  being  a  state  church,  and  the  New  England  church 
as  a  free  church;  in  fact  the  church  in  New  England  was  quite 
as  much  a  state  church  as  the  Church  of  England  in  Virginia, 
or  even  the  Cathohc  Church  in  Italy;  it  would  be  impossible 
to  imagine  a  church  which  was  more  completely  a  state  church 
than  that  established  in  the  early  New  England  colonies.  The 
church  was  the  state,  and  the  state  was  the  church.  For  a 
long  time  even  the  governing  bodies  of  the  two  were  identical, 
possibly  because  the  early  Puritans  regarded  the  Bible  as  a 
sort  of  working  handbook  of  laws,  and  just  as  the  Jewish  law 
was  written  in  Deuteronomy,  so  the  law  of  the  Puritans  was 
written  in  the  Bible,  and  the  acts  of  the  governing  body  were 
mainly  declarations  of  the  penalties  attached  to  failure  to 
comply  with  these  laws. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES       15 

In  order  to  be  a  burgess  with  the  right  to  vote,  one  had  to 
belong  to  one  of  the  churches  established  by  law  in  New 
England,  but  the  churches  elected  new  members  as  if  they 
were  modern  clubs,  rejecting  those  unfit  for  Christian  fellow- 
ship (and  it  was  astonishing  how  httle  made  a  man  unfit) ,  but 
the  fact  that  a  man  was  not  permitted  to  join  a  church  and 
therefore  could  not  vote  did  not  mean  either  that  he  was  free 
from  taxation  or  that  he  did  not  have  to  go  to  church.  Oh, 
no,  indeed!  He  had  to  attend  just  as  faithfully  as  any  church 
member  and  behave  with  the  same  decorum,  or  else  be  whipped 
and  fined.  He  had  to  pay  his  taxes  for  the  support  of  that 
church,  too,  and  if  he  so  much  as  dared  to  insinuate  that  the 
minister  might  be  improved  upon  in  any  respect,  he  was 
whipped  or  fined  again.  **No  taxation  without  representa- 
tion" was  not  the  rallying  word  of  early  New  England,  any 
more  than  mercy  and  justice  were  things  to  be  actually  used, 
and  not  merely  delightful  subjects  for  discussion. 

New  churches  in  New  England  were  self-organized;  and  any 
group  of  men  setthng  in  a  definite  territory  who  were  neigh- 
bors, and  who  "were  satisfied  of  one  another's  honest  faith 
and  repentance,"  might  enter  into  a  covenant  (or  written 
agreement)  to  organize  and  carry  on  a  church.  The  number 
of  men  who  could  thus  organize  was  not  fixed  by  legal  status: 
in  one  case  as  few  as  four  men  entered  into  a  covenant,  while 
seven  or  eight  was  a  not  uncommon  number.  However,  no 
new  church  could  be  recognized  as  part  of  the  ecclesiastical 


16      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

system  until  the  character  of  its  members  had  been  approved 
by  the  magistrates  and  the  elders  of  the  existing  churches.  By 
this  means  the  original  churches  were  able  to  continue  their 
polity  (whether  civil  or  religious)  without  danger  of  its  altera- 
tion by  people  who  did  not  agree  with  the  existing  order  of 
things.  The  covenants  were  in  most  cases  of  very  broad 
character,  brief  and  of  simple  terminology,  so  that  even  those 
churches  which  have  changed  their  doctrines  during  the 
course  of  their  development  are  still  operating  under  the  orig- 
inal covenants. 

The  system  of  universal  taxation  was  satisfactory  enough, 
as  long  as  the  church  was  enabled  to  either  transport  to 
England  or  banish  to  the  wilderness  people  who  disagreed 
with  it,  but  as  other  faiths  set  up  their  churches  and  were 
tolerated,  the  hardship  of  contributing  to  the  support  of  two 
churches  became  too  great  to  be  borne,  and  in  1727  exemption 
from  taxation  was  granted  to  the  Episcopahans,  who  had  the 
support  of  the  Crown  behind  them,  and  in  1728-1729  the  Bap- 
tists and  the  Quakers  were  also  exempted.  The  system  of  uni- 
versal taxation  for  church  support,  while  actually  followed  in 
all  New  England  colonies,  was  not  the  theoretical  method 
of  some  of  the  settlements;  in  New  Haven,  for  example,  people 
were  requested  to  contribute  voluntarily;  since  there  were  very 
heavy  penalties  against  those  who  did  not  so  contribute  in 
proper  proportion  to  their  means,  it  was  a  distinction  without 
a  difference,  and  even  this  shadow  of  voluntary  support  was 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      17 

in  time  withdrawn,  so  that  in  Connecticut,  Massachusetts, 
and  the  territories  governed  by  Massachusetts,  the  State 
Church  was  universal,  and  was  only  dis-estabUshed,  in  Con- 
necticut in  1818,  and  in  Massachusetts  in  1834. 

The  New  England  congregations,  continued  at  first  as 
part  of  the  Church  of  England,  gradually  became  more  and 
more  completely  separated  from  it,  both  because  the  Church 
of  England  refused  to  recognize  the  informal  ordination  of 
their  ministers,  and  because  the  congregations  themselves 
declined  to  countenance  the  authority  of  the  bishops.  These 
congregations  felt  the  need  of  some  superior  body,  and  grad- 
ually a  good  part  of  the  authority  originally  held  by  the 
governor  and  council  of  the  company  fell  into  the  hands 
of  a  synod,  or  convention,  composed  of  the  elders  and  minis- 
ters of  the  different  churches.  At  first  the  governor  and 
council  were  members  of  this  synod,  although  not  ex  officio; 
but  certain  governors,  notably  Sir  Henry  Vane,  being  found 
at  issue  with  the  synod  in  points  of  doctrine,  this  custom  was 
discontinued,  and  the  synod  acted  independently,  although 
its  resolutions  had  for  many  years  the  effect  of  law,  since 
they  were  immediately  ratified  and  put  into  effect  by  the 
government  of  the  colonies.  These  congregations  and  their 
synod,  or  convention,  formed  what  we  to-day  know  as  the 
Congregational  Church. 

Before  considering  the  other  colonists  there  are  two  other 
sects  which  must  be  considered,  both  outgrowths  of  the  Puri- 


18  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

tan  Church:  the  Unitarian  and  the  Baptist.  Unitarianism 
was  a  behef  rather  than  a  movement,  and,  as  it  gained  strength 
among  members  of  the  churches,  their  independent  govern- 
ing bodies  automatically  transformed  them  into  Unitarian 
churches.  Such  was  the  case  with  the  First  Church  of  Ply- 
mouth, founded  1620;  the  First  Church  of  Salem,  founded  in 
1630,  and  the  First  Church  of  Boston,  founded  in  1640;  so 
that  while  all  these  exist  under 'their  original  covenant,  they 
are  now  Unitarian.  Curiously  enough,  however,  the  first  church 
to  openly  declare  itself  Unitarian  was  not  one  of  the  cove- 
nanting churches,  but  the  Episcopal  Church  housed  in  Kings 
Chapel  in  Boston;  the  proprietors  of  this  church  in  1785,  by 
a  vote  of  twenty  to  seven,  declared  themselves  Unitarian,  al- 
though as  late  as  the  year  1800  all  the  covenanting  churches 
were  still  on  the  fence. 

The  Unitarian  Church  has  been  spoken  of  here  because  the 
congregations  formed  by  the  original  Puritans  or  Covenanters 
have  been  split  up  between  the  Congregational  and  Unitarian 
churches,  and  in  these  two  faiths  they  continue  to  exist  to-day. 

The  first  dissenters  from  the  ranks  of  the  Dissenters  were 
not,  however,  the  Unitarians,  but  the  Baptists,  led  to  some 
extent  at  least  by  Roger  Williams.  Roger  Williams  appears 
to  have  been  a  Puritan  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England, 
who  had  come  to  the  colonies  at  a  very  early  date,  and  was 
not  allowed  to  preach  or  belong  to  the  recognized  churches 
because  he  believed  in  complete  separation  from  the  Church 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      19 

of  England.  The  tales  of  his  difficulties  with  the  Puritans 
are  too  long,  too  cruel,  and  too  ridiculous  to  enter  into  here; 
he  was  finally  banished  into  the  wilderness,  and,  after  spending 
a  hard  winter  with  the  Indians,  retired  into  what  is  now 
Rhode  Island,  where  he  gathered  together  a  band  of  dis- 
satisfied spirits,  many  of  whom  had  also  been  banished  from 
Massachusetts,  and  there  the  Baptist  Church  was  founded. 
The  Reverend  Mr.  Williams,  however,  was  apparently  one  of 
those  restless  seekers  after  truth  who  can  never  be  satisfied 
with  anything,  for  he  finally  dissented  from  the  Baptists,  and 
died  the  only  member  of  a  church  of  his  own.  The  doctrine 
which  he  was  instrumental  in  promulgating  or  promoting 
gained  considerable  acceptance,  not  only  in  Massachusetts, 
but  throughout  the  United  States,  and  Baptist  congregations 
were  gradually  formed. 

One  other  of  the  very  early  sects  should  be  mentioned  here: 
the  Quakers.  It  seems  to  the  writer  that  there  has  been  a 
great  deal  of  sympathy  wasted  on  the  virtuous,  harmless 
(and  offensive)  members  of  the  sect  that  caused  so  much 
trouble  to  the  early  colonists.  They  were  persecuted  both 
in  New  England  and  in  Virginia  during  the  early  days  of  the 
colonies;  in  Virginia  they  were  told  to  go  away  and  not  come 
back  under  penalty  of  banishment  or  other  legal  procedure; 
but,  delighted  with  the  opportunity  offered  to  make  martyrs 
of  themselves,  they  declined  to  go,  or  after  being  banished  re- 
turned; a  few  of  them  were  fined  and  imprisoned. 


«0      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

In  Massachusetts  similar  action  was  taken,  and  when, 
after  they  had  been  banished,  fined,  imprisoned,  and  whipped, 
they  still  continued  their  activities,  the  Puritans  lost  patience, 
and  four  of  them  in  three  years  were  executed.  The  revulsion 
of  feeling,  both  in  New  England  and  Virginia,  which  followed 
these  severities  resulted  in  toleration  of  the  Quakers,  and  the 
consequent  termination  of  their  nuisances. 

It  may  be  presumed  with  some  show  of  reason  that  had 
the  Quakers  been  content  to  abide  by  the  recognized  (and 
possibly  requisite)  laws  of  the  colonies  into  which  they  entered, 
undesired  and  unwelcomed,  they  would  not  have  been  dis- 
turbed. Neither  the  Puritans  nor  the  Episcopalians  of  Vir- 
ginia seem  to  have  punished  men  for  holding  opinions  con- 
trary to  those  generally  accepted,  but  the  Quakers  were  not 
content  with  such  silent  opposition ;  they  entered  the  churches 
in  both  colonies  during  services,  denounced  the  faiths  of  those 
churches,  argued  with  the  clergy,  declined  to  comply  with  the 
laws  regarding  church  support,  church  attendance,  etc.,  and 
in  general  made  themselves  as  objectionable  nuisances  as 
people  of  that  day  could  imagine,  and  while  in  the  light  of 
the  present  we  must  deplore  the  existence  of  the  laws  which 
they  broke,  and  the  punishments  which  were  inflicted  on 
them  for  violation  of  these  laws,  we  must  confess  that  the 
aggravating  attitude  of  men  who  said,  "We  are  defenceless 
and  weak,  and  won't  hit  back;  come  and  slap  us  if  you  dare, 
you  big  cowardly  bullies,"  would  be  almost  too  much  for  our 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  21 

toleration,  and  certainly  proved  too  much  for  the  extremely 
hot-tempered  and  fanatic  colonists. 

One  of  the  most  powerful  of  the  present-day  churches  and 
one  which  has  remaining  a  not  inconsiderable  number  of  its 
early  structures  is  the  Presbyterian,  but  the  Presbyterians 
were  not  among  the  pioneers,  and  their  early  history  in  Amer- 
ica does  not  present  much  of  interest  to  any  one  except  the 
student  of  ecclesiastical  history.  Some  of  the  early  Congre- 
gational churches  in  Massachusetts  were  suspected  of  a  leaning 
toward  Presbyterianism,  but  the  oldest  official  Presbyterian 
churches  were  founded  by  Scotch  immigrants  who  brought  with 
them  their  ministers  and  their  faith.  The  Presbyterians 
were  representatives  of  the  established  Church  of  Scotland, 
which  at  the  time  of  the  early  settlement  of  the  United 
States  was  occupying  an  anomalous  position.  It  was  a 
church  which  acknowledged  the  authority  of  no  bishops,  yet 
still  had  bishops  as  part  of  its  organization,  and  even  before 
the  coming  of  this  sect  to  America  the  Presbyterians  had  been 
able  to  enfranchise  themselves,  ordain  their  own  ministers, 
and  by  congregations  or  by  presbyteries  to  dominate  their 
own  affairs.  There  was  no  particular  break  in  the  poHcy  of 
the  church,  and  from  the  beginning,  semi-independent  of  the 
home  church,  it  eventually  became  completely  independent. 

The  position  of  the  Lutherans  was  not  very  different:  there 
was  no  single  dominant  governing  body  of  the  Lutheran 
Church,  and  the  Lutherans  who  immigrated  to  this  country 


«2  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

were  not  only  Germans,  but  Dutch  and  Swedish,  and  while 
Luther anism  was  in  Sweden  the  State  Church,  and  was  ac- 
knowledged as  the  parent  body  by  the  Swedish  settlers  along 
the  Delaware  River,  the  ministers  being  sent  from  Sweden,  the 
German  and  Dutch  Lutherans  had  to  take  care  of  themselves ; 
and  eventually  the  separate  nationalities  became  part  of  the 
general  independent  organization. 

The  Dutch  Reformed  and  German  Reformed  churches  were 
governed  from  the  central  authority  at  Amsterdam.  The 
early  settlers  around  New  York  were  principally  members  of 
the  Dutch  Reformed  Church,  becoming  independent  of  the 
home  body  when  New  Amsterdam  was  captured  by  the  Eng- 
lish and  renamed  New  York.  The  Dutch  Reformed  and  Lu- 
theran churches  were  probably  the  most  tolerant  of  the  oflScially 
recognized  sects,  the  Lutheran  perhaps  because  they  came  on 
sufferance,  and  the  Dutch  Reformed  because  they  had  nobody 
to  persecute,  if  we  except  a  few  of  the  Lutheran  faith  in  New 
York  City;  even  these  were  not  heavily  penalized  for  their 
religion,  although  they  did  not  escape  scot  free. 

The  Quakers  in  Pennsylvania  and  the  Cathohcs  in  Mary- 
land were  the  only  other  sects  present  during  the  formative 
period  of  the  colonies,  and  curiously  enough  these  two  ex- 
tremes of  the  Christian  religion  were  the  only  two  which  did 
not  arrogate  to  themselves  the  sole  right  to  dictate  worship  in 
their  own  neighborhoods.  In  both  cases  their  admission  to 
the  colonies  at  all  was  completely  on  sufferance,  so  perhaps 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  23 

too  much  credit  should  not  be  given  to  them  for  their  apparent 
benevolence.  The  attitude  of  the  Catholic  Church  to-day 
toward  those  of  different  faith  is  in  marked  contrast  to  what 
it  once  was,  and  the  Quakers,  with  all  the  good  qualities  for 
which  they  have  been  so  deservedly  commended,  have  only 
within  the  past  few  generations  exhibited  much  evidence  of 
believing  that  anybody  but  a  Quaker  could  get  to  heaven. 

The  above  summary  of  the  facts  concerning  the  history  of 
the  organizations  of  the  early  American  churches  will  give 
suflficient  understanding  of  the  methods  of  government  in 
the  colonies,  so  that  the  rise  and  growth  of  the  various  sects 
can  be  traced  through  their  buildings  with  some  degree  of 
understanding.  The  beginnings  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  in  Virginia  and  of  the  Congregational  Church  in  New 
England  have  been  dealt  with  with  some  particularity  because 
they  were  the  two  most  influential  factors  in  the  development 
of  American  church  architecture,  and  also,  while  they  are 
most  fully  covered  in  American  history,  the  histories  themselves 
convey  (without  misstating  facts)  a  false  impression  of  a  state 
of  conscience  and  affairs  in  these  early  days. 

In  looking  over  the  illustrations  of  this  volume  one  will  find 
that  a  plurality  of  the  buildings  illustrated  were  constructed 
by  the  descendants  of  the  New  England  settlers,  and  by  far 
the  larger  part  of  the  remaining  ones  were  built  by  the  Epis- 
copal Church.  Of  old  Baptist  churches  we  have  but  a  few; 
four  or  five  of  the  Lutheran  and  Dutch  Reformed  churches. 


24  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

several  Presbyterian,  but  not  one  example  remaining  from  the 
days  of  the  Catholic  settlement;  Methodism  only  began  in  this 
country  in  1760.  We  will  also  find  by  comparison  of  the  il- 
lustrations that  the  denomination  had  less  influence  in  the 
design  and  construction  of  the  buildings  than  did  the  local 
traditions  connected  with  the  part  of  the  country  in  which 
they  were  erected,  and  we  will  therefore  in  this  volume  take  up 
the  buildings  somewhat  in  chronological  order  and  somewhat 
according  to  their  geographic  distribution. 


CHAPTER  II 

CHURCHES   OF   THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

OF  the  church  edifices  completed  during  the  seven- 
teenth century  there  are  but  four  remaining  which  we 
know  certainly  to  have  been  completed  prior  to  1700: 
St.  Luke's,  near  Smithfield,  in  Isle  of  Wight  County,  Virginia; 
the  Ship  Meeting  House  at  Hingham,  Massachusetts;  "Gloria 
Dei"  at  Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania,  and  Trinity  or  Old 
Swede's  at  Wilmington,  Delaware.  One  other  church  was 
probably  begun  in  1700  and  will  be  considered  in  this  chapter, 
not  only  because  chronologically  a  wide  gap  separates  it  from  the 
eighteenth  century  churches,  but  also  because  architecturally  it 
approaches  the  churches  of  the  seventeenth  century  more 
nearly  than  the  later  ones;  this  is  St.  Peter's,  New  Kent  County, 
Virginia.  Two  others  were  perhaps  built  during  the  century :  the 
Quaker  Meeting  House  at  Flushing,  and  the  Dutch  Reformed 
Church  at  Oakland,  New  Jersey,  both  small,  uninteresting  build- 
ings. There  is  still  one  other  building  which  might  possibly  be 
classified  as  a  seventeenth  century  church,  the  ruins  of  the  old 
church  erected  at  Jamestown  and  destroyed  in  the  fire  which 
swept  the  town,  and  recently  reconstructed;  the  ruined  tower 
of  this  church  is  the  one  which  is  familiar  from  the  wood  cuts  in 
the  school  histories,  but  as  the  restoration  of  the  church  was 

25 


26      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

largely  conjectural,  and  as  the  church  building  was  not  in  ex- 
istence during  one  hundred  and  fifty  years,  further  discussion 
of  it  seems  to  be  unnecessary. 

St.  Luke's  near  Sinithfield,  built  in  1632,  is  the  oldest  building 
of  English  construction  in  the  United  States,  antedating  the 
ruined  church  at  Jamestown  by  forty-five  years,  and  when  one 
realizes  that  the  first  settlement  at  Jamestown  was  made  only 
twenty-five  years  before  the  erection  of  this  building,  its  size 
and  dignified  character  are  surprising.  In  spite  of  its  age  it 
has  not  about  it  the  historical  associations  that  many  of  the 
more  recent  churches  possess;  it  seems  to  have  been  the  church 
of  a  parish  situated  in  a  quiet  backwater  of  the  Virginia  col- 
ony, and  none  of  the  men  whose  names  are  familiar  to  us  from 
the  prominent  parts  they  played  either  during  the  Colonial 
period  or  during  the  Revolution  was  closely  associated  with 
it;  but  even  aside  from  the  fact  that  it  is  the  earhest  remaining 
church  of  English  construction  its  architectural  interest  is 
sufliciently  great  to  make  it  far  better  known  than  it  appears 
to  be.  It  was  constructed  by  one  Joseph  Bridger,  who  prob- 
ably made  what  drawings  were  necessary,  besides  acting  as  the 
superintendent;  we  know  Httle  about  him,  except  that  his  son 
was  General  Joseph  Bridger,  a  councillor  of  state  in  Virginia 
to  King  Charles  II,  and  a  man  of  much  importance  in  the 
colony. 

For  over  two  hundred  years  it  was  used  continually  as  a 
place  of  worship,  but  in  1836  it  was  abandoned  and  gradually 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  27 

became  more  and  more  dilapidated,  mi  til  in  1884  the  roof  fell 
and  brought  down  with  it  a  portion  of  the  eastern  wall.  At 
that  time  the  Reverend  David  Barr,  the  clergyman  of  a  neigh- 
boring church,  realized  the  importance  of  the  old  structure  to 
American  history,  and  was  instrumental  in  collecting  money 
enough  to  repair  it  and  put  it  in  thoroughly  good  order;  there 
was  very  Uttle  of  the  old  interior  woodwork,  and  none  of  the 
old  glass  left,  but  from  what  remained  Mr.  E.  J.  N.  Stent,  the 
architect  who  conducted  the  restoration,  and  who,  by  the 
way,  worked  gratuituously  and  even  collected  money  to  help 
during  the  restoration,  succeeded  in  working  out  the  present 
interior  as  nearly  as  could  be  determined  along  the  original 
Hues.  Fortunately  the  brickwork  was  intact  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  part  of  the  eastern  wall  before  spoken  of,  and  he 
cannot  have  gone  far  wrong  either  in  the  exterior  or  in  the  in- 
terior. When  the  restoration  was  made  twelve  memorial  win- 
dows were  placed  in  the  church,  and  it  may  be  interesting 
to  note  the  names  of  those  to  whom  the  windows  were  dedi- 
cated: George  Washington,  Robert  E.  Lee,  Joseph  Bridger,  the 
architect;  William  Hubbard,  the  first  rector  of  the  church;  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh,  Captain  John  Smith,  John  Rolfe,  Reverend 
Dr.  Blair,  founder  of  the  College  of  WilHam  and  Mary,  and 
Bishops  Madison,  Meade,  Moore,  and  Johns,  and  the  choice 
of  these  twelve  names  is  interesting  because  we  find  the  archi- 
tect honored  with  the  clergy  of  the  church  and  with  the 
famous  men  of  the  colony. 


28  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

Architecturally  the  building  is  an  extremely  picturesque 
brick  church,  reminiscent  not  of  the  Renaissance  work  then 
becoming  dominant  in  England,  but  of  the  older  Gothic;  it  is 
not  at  all  unlike  many  of  the  small  Enghsh  parish  churches  of 
the  sixteenth  century  when  the  Gothic  style  was  really  ex- 
tinct, although  its  superficial  characteristics,  the  buttress  and 
the  pointed  arch,  still  obtained.  The  stepped  gable  at  the  chan- 
cel end  of  the  church  is  an  unusual  feature  in  English  church 
architecture,  but  in  the  restoration  of  the  church  at  James- 
town the  same  type  of  gable  was  followed.  The  tower  is  the 
only  part  of  the  building  which  shows  the  Renaissance  influ- 
ence, and  this  only  in  the  detail  of  the  tower,  where  coigns  were 
used  for  strengthening  the  angles  instead  of  buttresses,  and  a 
sort  of  pediment  was  applied  above  the  main  entrance  door. 
The  muUions  were  constructed  of  brick,  and  the  chancel  win- 
dow is  very  interesting,  not  only  because  of  its  really  excellent 
quality  of  design,  but  also  because  it  employs  both  circular  and 
pointed  windows  in  an  unusual  and  agreeable  way. 

It  is  rather  surprising  to  find  a  building  of  this  distinctly 
rural  type,  since  the  immigrants  into  Virginia  have  been 
commonly  supposed  to  be  city  folk,  and  one  would  have 
expected  them  to  transport  with  them  the  style  of  architecture 
then  fashionable;  but  as  before  said,  the  only  portion  of  the 
building  which  even  suggests  Renaissance  work  is  the  tower. 
The  building  was  of  no  great  size  —  few  of  the  Virginia 
churches  were — but  the  excellence  of  its  proportions,  and  the 


THE    "old    ship       meeting    HOUSE,    HINGHAM,    MASSACHUSETTS 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      29 

rather  unusual  interest  in  every  portion  of  its  design,  would 
single  it  out  for  consideration  even  were  it  not  remarkable  for 
its  antiquity. 

The  older  churches  in  Virginia  are  not,  on  the  whole,  a  very 
interesting  lot  of  structures;  the  country  is  even  to-day 
sparsely  settled,  and  in  the  Colonial  period,  owing  to  the 
system  of  colonization  employed,  the  population  was  still 
more  scattered,  so  that  during  those  times  churches  were  in- 
frequently less  than  ten  miles  apart,  and  were  located  not  at 
any  little  settlement,  but  in  approximately  the  centres  of  the 
parishes  which  they  served.  There  was  no  collection  of  wealth 
at  any  one  point,  and  even  the  later  Virginia  churches,  except 
those  in  the  cities,  were  neither  very  large  nor  very  finely 
executed,  so  that  while  some  of  the  most  interesting  Colonial 
domestic  architecture  in  the  country  is  along  the  James  River, 
the  churches  are,  as  a  class,  of  historic  rather  than  of  archi- 
tectural importance.  The  larger  landowners  not  infrequently 
constructed  chapels  on  their  own  estates  because  of  the  dijBS- 
culties  attending  a  five-mile  ride  over  the  frightfully  muddy 
Virginia  roads,  and  thus  the  interest  of  the  wealthiest  portion 
of  the  parishes  was  diverted  from  what  one  would  be  expected 
to  be  the  natural  ends. 

Such  churches  as  St.  Paul's  at  Norfolk,  Virginia,  which  was 
built  in  what  was  then  a  small  town,  were  far  above  the  average 
of  the  Virginia  church  structures.  St.  Paul's  has  a  very 
interesting  history,  and  its  records  have  been  carefully  pre- 


30      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

served,  so  we  can  learn  something  of  the  way  in  which  the 
colonists  went  about  their  church  building  and  administration 
during  the  seventeenth  century.  The  present  building  was 
the  second  constructed  on  the  same  site,  and  was  built  in 
1759;  but  very  full  information  is  at  hand  about  its  predeces- 
sor, built  in  1638,  and  it  is  worth  while  transcribing  for  the 
light  it  sheds  on  that  early  day.  At  the  time  of  the  construc- 
tion of  the  first  St.  Paul's  there  were  already  two  churches 
in  Norfolk  County,  but  the  settlement  at  Elizabeth  River 
(now  Norfolk)  had  so  largely  increased  that  its  inhabitants, 
strongly  disinclined  to  travel  eight  miles  to  the  nearest  church 
(as  under  the  laws  they  were  compelled  to  do),  desired  a  church 
for  themselves,  and  procured  from  the  governor  and  council 
an  order  for  its  institution.  This  order  has  been  lost,  but  we 
learn  from  a  letter,  in  part  copied  below,  that  construction 
was  not  carried  on  continuously,  and  that  it  was  necessary 
to  issue  a  new  order  for  its  completion: 

"At  a  Court  holden  in  the  Lower  County  of  New  Norfolke 
21  of  November  1638. 

*'Capt.  Adam  Thorowgood,  Esq.,  Capt.  John  Sibsey,  Mr. 
Willie  JuUan,  Mr.  Edward  Windha,  Mr.  Francis  Mason,  Mr. 
Henry  Seawell. 

"Whereas  there  hath  beene  an  order  of  Court  granted  by 
the  Governor  and  Counsell  for  the  Building  and  erecting 
of  a  Church  in  the  upper  —  of  this  County  with  a  reference 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      31 

to  the  Commander  and  Commissioners  of  sd  County  for 
appointing  of  a  place  fitting  and  convenient  for  the  situation 
and  building  thereof,  the  sd  order  being  in  part  not  accom- 
plish. But  standing  now  in  elsortion  to  be  voyde  and  the 
work  to  fall  into  ruins.  We  now  the  sd.  Commissioners 
taking  it  into  consideration  doe  appoint  Captain  John  Sibsey 
and  Henry  Sea  well  to  procure  workmen  for  the  finishing  of  the 
same  and  what  they  shall  agree  for  with  the  sd.  workmen  to 
be  levied  by  the  appointment  of  us  the  Commissioners." 

This  order  is  of  interest  as  indicating  how  completely  the 
ecclesiastical  affairs  of  the  colony  were  run  by  the  civil  gov- 
ernment. We  find  no  mention  in  it  of  the  members  of  the 
parish  as  having  to  do  with  the  construction,  nor  is  the  rector 
apparently  considered  at  all,  a  very  different  state  of  affairs 
from  what  nowadays  obtains.  A  man  named  Lillie  was  the 
builder  of  the  church,  but  work  went  along  so  slowly  that  it 
was  not  until  1641,  either  three  or  four  years  after  its  begin- 
ning, that  it  was  completed,  and  the  modern  trouble  between 
owners  and  contractors  had  its  parallel  in  this  case,  where 
a  certain  Mr.  Hayes,  in  complaining  of  the  delay,  spoke  of  the 
workmen  as  "a  company  of  jackanapesses."  He  was  in- 
stantly sued  for  slander  by  the  builder,  who  testified  that  his 
work  could  not  go  forward  for  want  of  "nayles"  and  other 
ironwork.  The  esteem  in  which  our  Colonial  ancestors  re- 
garded their  churches  is  shown  by  another  curious  entry  in 


32      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

the  records  of  St.  Paul's:  a  certain  person  was  punished  for 
scandalous  conduct  by  being  made  to  sit  upon  a  stool  at  the 
end  of  the  aisle  for  two  successive  Sundays,  the  punishment 
apparently  consisting  of  the  substitution  of  the  aisle  for  his 
pew,  since  the  entire  congregation  suffered  the  penalty  of 
going  to  church  anyway. 

St.  Peter's  in  New  Kent  County,  Virginia,  is  the  only  other 
existing  Virginia  church  which  dates  from  practically  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  is  in  general  type  not  very  dif- 
ferent from  St.  Luke's  at  Smithfield,  although  it  does  not 
possess  the  interest  of  the  older  building,  and  is  of  more 
marked  Renaissance  characteristics.  St.  Peter's  parish,  it 
is  believed,  was  established  with  the  forming  of  the  New 
County  of  Kent,  which  was  formed  from  the  County  of  York 
in  1654.  There  are  no  extant  records  for  the  period  between 
its  foundation  and  the  year  1684. 

The  first  reference  in  the  vestry  book  to  the  present  St. 
Peter's  Church  is  found  in  the  minutes  of  the  meeting  held 
August  13,  1700:  "Whereas,  the  Lower  Church  of  this 
Parish  is  very  much  out  of  Repair  and  Standeth  very  incon- 
venient for  most  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  said  parish;  There- 
fore ordered  that  as  soon  as  conveniently  may  be  a  new 
Church  of  Brick  Sixty  feet  long  and  twenty  fower  feet  wide 
in  the  clear  and  fourteen  feet  pitch  with  a  Gallery  Sixteen  feet 
long  be  built  and  Erected  upon  the  maine  Roade  by  the 
School   House   near  Thomas   Jackson's:    and   the   Clerk   is 


"gloria    DEI,"    OLD    SWEDEs'    CHURCH,    PHILADELPHIA,    PA. 


INTERIOR,    "gloria    DEI,"    OLD    SWEDES     CHURCH,    PHILADELPHIA,    PA. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      33 

ordered  to  give  a  Copy  of  this  order  to  Capt.  Nicho  Mere- 
wether  who  is  Requested  to  show  the  same  to  Will  Hughes 
and  desire  him  to  draw  a  Draft  of  said  Church  and  to  bee  at 
the  next  vestry." 

Work  on  the  new  church  was  begun  in  the  spring  of  1701, 
and  in  1703  the  work  was  so  far  advanced  that  services  could 
be  held  in  the  building.  This  building  remained  unaltered 
for  twenty  years  or  more  except  for  a  brick  wall  built  around 
the  churchyard,  "s'd  wall  to  be  in  all  Respects  as  well  done  as 
the  Capitol  wall  in  Williamsburgh.'* 

In  1722  a  belfry  was  erected  at  the  west  end  of  the  church, 
and  in  the  year  1740  we  find  that  "the  Minister  and  Vestry 
of  this  Parish  have  Agreed  with  Mr.  Wm.  Worthe,  of  the 
Parish  of  St.  Paul  in  the  County  of  Stafford,  Builder,  to  Erect 
and  Build  a  Steeple  and  Vestry  Room  according  to  a  Plan 
Delivered  into  the  Vestry  drawn  by  the  S*d  Walter  (.'*)  for 
the  Consideration  of  One  Hundred  &  thirty  Pounds  at  times 
to  be  paid." 

Such  minor  alterations  and  repairs  as  have  been  made  to 
the  old  church  since  1740  have  not  changed  its  outward  ap- 
pearance to  any  great  extent.  St.  Peter's  looks  to-day  much 
as  it  did  toward  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  with  the 
added  attractiveness  produced  by  the  mellowness  of  age. 

During  the  Civil  War  St.  Peter's  was  defaced  by  soldiers 
who  used  the  building  for  a  stable.  The  war  did  much  to 
scatter  the  congregation;  there  were  those  left,  however,  who 


34  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

set  to  work  to  renew  and  repair  the  damaged  church,  and  the 
interior  of  St.  Peter's  Church,  as  it  appears  to-day,  deserves 
notice.  The  walls  are  plastered,  marked  off  in  blocks,  and 
colored  a  soft  gray.  The  benches  are  simple  in  design,  and 
have  been  painted  a  sober  brown.  The  illustration  is  some- 
what severe  in  its  simplicity,  but  not  without  advantage  as 
offering  little  to  distract  the  worshipper's  attention,  and  ser- 
vices are  still  being  held  in  St.  Peter's  on  one  Sunday  of  the 
month. 

From  records  of  the  parish  we  are  able  to  learn  certain  facts 
which  perhaps  are  not  of  themselves  remarkable,  but  go  to 
show  how  completely  interwoven  was  the  life  of  the  state  and 
that  of  the  church.  The  first  is  that  the  vestry  of  St.  Peter's, 
not  being  able  to  determine  the  exact  bounds  of  their  parish, 
appointed  one  of  their  number  to  appear  before  Francis,  Lord 
Howard,  Baron  Effingham,  then  Lieutenant  Governor  of 
Virginia,  and  the  council,  so  that  the  boundaries  between 
their  parish  and  the  adjoining  one  of  Blissland  might  be 
determined.  Thus  we  find  that  the  civil  government  of  the 
colony  was  called  upon  to  determine  who  should  have  the 
spiritual  charge  of  some  of  the  colonists.  The  second  record 
shows  that  the  vestry  of  the  church  exercised  what  would 
nowadays  be  considered  part  of  the  ordinary  police  powers. 
In  the  vestry  book  of  October  5,  1687,  one  may  read  that  "It 
is  ordered  that  Mr.  Thomas  Mitchell  do  prosecute  ye  woman 
servant  belonging  to  Captain  Jo.  Forster  for  having  a  bastard 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  35 

child";  such  an  offence  was  perhaps  rather  against  moral  law 
than  civil  law,  but  in  those  days  there  was  no  distinction  made 
between  the  two,  and  the  state  regulated  the  affairs  of  the 
church  with  as  little  doubt  of  its  authority  as  the  vestry 
displaj^ed  in  regulating  the  petty  criminal  affairs  of  the  neigh- 
borhood. It  will  be  noticed  in  the  order  of  construction  of 
this  building  that  Will  Hughes  was  instructed  to  draw  a  draft 
of  the  church,  but  as  to  who  Will  Hughes  was,  or  what  were 
his  qualifications  in  design,  we  have  no  further  knowledge. 
Architects  were  even  more  of  a  luxury  then  than  they  are 
now,  and  there  were  very  few  men  in  England  who  exercised 
solely  the  functions  of  the  architect  of  to-daj^;  most  of  them 
were  builders  or  masons  who  by  reason  of  their  ability  to  draw 
were  given  authority  over  those  of  their  co-workers  who  were 
unable  to  thus  lay  out  their  working  plans. 

These  two  churches,  St.  Peter's  in  Kent  County,  and  St. 
Luke's  in  Smithfield,  are  all  that  remain  of  the  very  early 
generation  of  Colonial  churches  in  Virginia,  and  we  find  them 
styhstically  distinct  from  the  later  work,  exhibiting,  it  is  true, 
some  shght  beginnings  of  the  classic  styles  in  which  most 
of  our  church  buildings  are  designed,  but  resembling  rather  the 
earlier  type  of  church  building  in  England.  In  New  England 
the  earliest  buildings  resembled  no  English  buildings  at  all, 
either  of  the  earlier  or  later  type,  but  a  style  was  evolved 
which  was  pecuhar  to  the  period. 

Practically  all  the  first  church  buildings  were  square  or  very 


36      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

nearly  square,  with  a  hipped  roof  and  a  belfry  balanced  on  the 
peak  of  the  hips.  That  this  type  was  the  usual  one  is  proved 
by  the  abundance  of  wood  cuts  of  the  early  churches  which 
show  them  as  being  almost  invariably  built  in  this  manner, 
even  to  the  log  churches,  which  were  the  first  of  all.  They  re- 
sembled rather  blockhouses  than  churches  or  temples,  and  the 
type  having  been  established  by  these  early  buildings  seems  to 
have  been  continued  with  slight  variations  until  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  They  were  built  for  defence  as  well  as 
for  worship,  and  a  provision  of  the  law  in  Massachusetts  which 
prohibited  any  man  from  building  a  dwelling  except  within 
half  a  mile  from  the  nearest  church  soon  made  the  church 
buildings  the  nuclei  of  settlements.  They  were  at  first  set 
upon  the  hilltops  so  that  a  watch  in  the  belfry  would  be  able 
to  discover  the  approach  of  hostile  savages  from  any  direction, 
and  trees  were  not  permitted  to  grow  near  them,  perhaps  be- 
cause they  wished  to  offer  no  shelter  to  an  approaching  enemy, 
and  perhaps  because  the  Roman  temples  were  set  in  groves  of 
trees.  The  earlier  buildings  were  surrounded  by  stockades, 
but  as  the  danger  from  savages  became  less,  the  buildings  lost 
somewhat  of  their  fortified  character,  and  stockades  were  done 
away  with,  but  the  early  type  was  continued  even  though 
built  of  the  lighter  materials. 

The  only  church  of  the  seventeenth  century  remaining  in  New 
England  is  the  so-called  "Ship  Meeting  House"  at  Hingham, 
which  was  a  plain,  good-sized  square  structure  with  a  hipped 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  37 

roof  and  a  small  belfry.  In  shape  it  was  not  at  all  unlike  the  first 
buildings,  and  while  possessing  no  very  great  amount  of  beauty 
in  itself,  it  is  interesting  both  because  of  its  antiquity  and  be- 
cause it  marks  a  period  of  development  in  American  archi- 
tecture. 

The  first  meeting  house  at  Hingham  was  built  soon  after 
the  settlement  in  1635,  and  possessed  what  was  at  that  time 
the  unique  distinction  that  there  was  a  bell  in  its  belfry.  The 
third  meeting  house  at  Hingham,  which  is  the  present  one,  was 
built  in  1681,  and  on  the  5th  of  January  in  1682  a  town  meet- 
ing was  held  for  the  first  time  in  the  new  house,  and  the  Sun- 
day following  two  children  were  baptized  in  it.  The  building 
was  erected  by  direct  taxation  on  the  one  hundred  and  forty- 
three  members  of  the  congregation,  costing  them  four  hundred 
and  thirty  pounds,  nearly  a  quarter  of  the  value  of  the  personal 
property  of  the  Plymouth  colony.  It  is  said  that  the  building 
was  built  by  ship's  carpenters,  and  it  is  seldom  we  find  frame- 
work so  skilfully  put  together  that  it  is  able  to  withstand  the 
wear  and  tear  of  over  two  centuries.  In  the  case  of  the  old 
"Ship  Meeting  House,"  however,  we  are  shown  that  the  tim- 
bers were  selected  and  erected  in  the  year  1680. 

On  May  3,  1680,  the  selectmen  were  directed  to  carry  on 
the  business  of  building  a  new  meeting  house,  and  at  the  same 
meeting  it  was  voted  to  set  it  up  where  the  old  one  then  stood. 
Violent  conflicts  took  place  in  regard  to  the  placing  of  the  meet- 
ing house,  in  which  the  interference  of  the  general  council  was 


38  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

required.  A  tradition  is  handed  down  that  the  site  for  the 
meeting  house  was  fixed  on  the  lower  plain,  that  the  day  was 
appointed  for  the  raising  of  the  frame,  but  that  on  the  preced- 
ing night  it  was  carried  to  the  spot  where  the  meeting  house 
now  stands. 

On  August  11, 1680,  the  dimensions  of  the  house  were  fixed 
by  a  vote  of  the  town,  these  being  fifty-five  feet  in  length, 
forty-five  feet  in  breadth,  and  the  height  of  the  posts  twenty 
feet.  There  were  galleries  on  the  sides  and  porch  end.  On 
May  2,  1681,  the  town  approved  of  what  the  selectmen  had 
done  in  relation  to  the  new  meeting  house  and  its  location. 

New  England  can  boast  of  many  of  the  quaint  religious  land- 
marks of  the  colonists.  The  severe  taste  of  all  of  these  settlers 
is  exemplified  in  the  style  of  the  architecture  employed  in 
"Old  Ship."  It  is  interesting  to  know  that  the  building  was 
given  its  peculiar  name  because  of  its  construction.  The  roof 
is  in  the  form  of  a  truncated  pyramid  surmounted  by  a  belfry 
and  lookout  station.  This  "lookout"  has  given  the  church 
its  nautical  nickname;  surmounting  the  belfry  is  a  weather- 
vane.  The  church  stands  to-day,  as  far  as  the  exterior  is  con- 
cerned, just  as  it  was  originally  erected,  except  for  a  small 
porch  added  to  the  west  side. 

The  interior  of  the  church  is  rather  prosaic,  and  whatever 
elaboration  we  find  is  the  product  of  the  last  few  years.  As 
will  be  seen  in  the  illustration  shown  herewith,  the  bell  rope  is 
allowed  to  dangle  in  the  centre  aisle,  the  pulpit  is  rather  a 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      39 

massive  structure,  and  a  curiously  contrived  canopy  answers 
for  a  sounding  board.  The  organ  was  not  introduced  until  the 
year  1866. 

The  first  music  in  the  church  was  simply  furnished  by  a 
pitch  pipe,  this  giving  place  to  the  flute,  and  then  to  the 
clarionet,  and  the  church  seems  to  have  been  remarkable  even 
in  New  England  for  the  extreme  to  which  the  piety  of  its  con- 
gregation proceeded.  It  was  a  minister  of  Hingham  who 
"once  on  hearing  some  others  laugh  very  freely  while  I  sup- 
posed he  was  better  busied  in  his  room  above,  he  came  down 
and  said  thus  'cousins  I  wonder  how  you  can  be  so  merry  un- 
less you  are  sure  of  your  salvation.' "  It  probably  never  oc- 
curred to  this  gentleman  that  they  might  be  just  as  sure  of 
their  salvation  as  he  was  uncertain  of  his;  there  is  a  legend 
that  the  Hingham  church  was  about  the  last  in  which  the 
solemnization  of  marriage  by  the  clergy  was  permitted.  One 
does  not  know  why  marriage  by  the  clergy  was  considered  such 
an  evil  thing  by  the  early  Puritans,  but  it  was,  and  even  prayers 
for  the  dead  were  prohibited.  The  church  building  was  some- 
how expressive  of  the  tendency  of  its  congregations:  austere, 
square,  and  yet  somehow  cocky  and  self-confident;  an  inter- 
esting building  but  hardly  a  beautiful  one. 

The  two  other  old  churches  which  are  illustrated  in  this 
chapter,  *' Gloria  Dei"  at  Philadelphia,  and  Trinity  Church, 
otherwise  known  as  Old  Swede's,  Wilmington,  Delaware, 
were  begun  in  the  closing  years  of  the  seventeenth  century: 


40  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

*' Gloria  Dei"  in  1697,  and  old  Swede's  in  1698.  They  were 
both  branches  of  the  State  Church  of  Sweden,  the  Evangeli- 
cal Lutheran,  and,  as  stated  above,  were  governed  direct  from 
the  Swedish  Church  authorities. 

The  earlier  of  the  two,  "Gloria  Dei,"  was  begun  on  Sep- 
tember 19,  1697,  and  was  dedicated  on  Julj^  2,  1700,  the  con- 
gregation which  built  the  church  having  been  consoHdated 
from  the  congregations  which  had  previously  met  in  two 
meeting  houses,  one  in  Wycacoa,  and  the  other  at  Tranhook, 
and  fifty-seven  families  were  represented  at  the  meeting  which 
decided  to  build  this  church.  The  building  was  sixty  feet 
long,  thirty  feet  wide,  and  twenty  feet  high;  the  foundations 
were  of  stone  and  the  walls  of  brick;  no  tower  was  constructed 
with  the  rest  of  the  building,  as  the  congregation  was  in  doubt 
as  to  whether  it  could  procure  a  chime  of  bells.  While  the 
walls  were  thick,  they  were  apparently  not  substantial  enough 
to  resist  the  thrust  of  the  roof  timbers,  and  in  1704  a  sacristy 
erected  adjoining  the  north  end  of  the  structure,  and  the 
vestibule  built  against  the  south  side,  acted  as  buttresses.  In 
1710  permission  was  granted  to  members  of  the  Church  of 
England  resident  in  Philadelphia  to  use  this  church  for  their 
services,  and,  in  view  of  the  intolerance  which  existed  through- 
out the  colonies  at  this  date,  it  is  a  pleasant  surprise  to  find 
that  at  the  Church  of  England  services  a  hymn  was  sung 
in  Swedish  to  express  the  harmony  between  the  two  con- 
gregations.    Swedish  as  a  language  for  the  Lutheran  service 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  41 

was  gradually  forgotten,  and  services  are  now  held  in  English. 
The  land  on  which  the  church  stands  was  given  by  one  of  the 
congregation,  and  although  the  Swedish  colonists  were  both 
ignorant  and  poor,  they  supported  their  church  building 
in  such  a  whole-hearted  way  that  when  the  edifice  was  ded- 
icated it  was  described  by  its  pastor  in  these  words:  "Through 
God's  blessing  we  have  completed  a  great  work,  and  have 
built  a  church  superior  to  any  in  this  coimtry,  so  that  the 
English  themselves,  who  now  govern  this  province  and  are 
beyond  measure  richer  than  we  are,  wonder  at  what  we  have 
done."  Buildings  in  America  must  have  been  primitive  in- 
deed when  such  a  little  plain  structure  as  this  could  surpass 
all  other  existing  churches;  and  while  there  is  a  great  deal 
that  is  quaint  and  interesting,  both  in  the  interior  and  the 
exterior  of  the  building,  it  has  no  very  great  pretensions 
to  architectural  merit.  The  galleries  in  the  interior  were  not 
part  of  the  original  scheme,  and  it  is  probable  that  most  of 
the  interior  woodwork  as  it  now  exists  was  also  added  at  some 
time  subsequent  to  the  erection  of  the  building,  but  it  is  not 
only  agreeable  in  design,  but  is  also  harmonious  with  the 
balance  of  the  building. 

Trinity  at  Wilmington  was  dedicated  on  Trinity  Sunday, 
1699,  and  the  dimensions  of  the  original  building  were  pre- 
cisely the  same  as  those  of  "Gloria  Dei":  sixty  feet  long, 
thirty  feet  wide,  and  twenty  feet  high.  The  walls  were  built 
of  granite  laid  in  clay,  and  pointed  up  in  lime  mortar,  and  the 


42      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

builders,  in  order  to  insure  durability,  made  the  foundation 
wall  six  feet  thick,  while  the  superstructure  at  the  windows 
is  three  feet  thick.  The  plan  is  rather  interesting,  since  the 
portion  of  the  building  to  the  right  of  the  doorway  is  un- 
obstructed to  the  roof,  while  a  small  gallery  extends  across 
nearly  half  the  church  at  the  left,  and  is  reached  by  the  stair- 
case partly  on  the  exterior  and  partly  in  the  interior,  beginning 
at  the  entrance  porch.  While  this  church  was  begun  a  year 
after  "Gloria  Dei,"  it  was  completed  a  year  before  the  other 
church,  and  as  in  the  case  of  "Gloria  Dei,"  one  of  the  con- 
gregation gave  the  land  for  the  building.  The  expense  of 
construction  was  eight  hundred  pounds,  a  very  large  sum  for 
any  church  congregation  in  those  days,  and  especially  for  the 
Swedes,  who  were  at  this  time  entirely  cut  off  from  any  state 
support,  since  New  Sweden  had  been  conquered  by  the 
Dutch  and  ceded  with  New  Amsterdam  to  the  English.  The 
settlement,  even  when  this  church  was  built,  was  an  old  one, 
having  been  founded  in  1627,  half  a  century  before  the  settle- 
ment of  Pennsylvania  by  the  Quakers  under  Wilham  Penn. 
As  was  the  case  with  "Gloria  Dei,"  poor  roof  construction 
threw  the  walls  out  of  plumb,  and  in  1750  buttresses  were 
built  and  extensive  alterations  made  to  stiffen  up  the  walls, 
and  additional  windows  were  introduced  at  the  same  time. 
In  1792  the  church  decided  to  adopt  the  ritual  of  the  Protes- 
tant Episcopal  Church,  and  was  admitted  into  the  diocese  of 
Delaware  of  the  Episcopal  Church. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      43 

These  two  Swedish  churches  complete  the  Hst  of  church 
structures  remaining  from  the  seventeenth  century,  and  it 
will  be  seen  that  in  no  case  was  there  much  of  either  historic 
interest  or  architectural  pretension  gathered  about  them. 
Perhaps  the  very  fact  that  they  were  not  centres  of  strong 
and  prosperous  communities  has  preserved  them  to  us,  since 
without  expansion  of  their  congregations  new  structures  were 
not  needed. 


CHAPTER  III 

NEW  ENGLAND  CHURCHES  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY 

FROM  the  eighteenth  century  we  have  remaining  some 
of  the  handsomest  and  best  designed  of  all  the  early- 
American  churches,  and  by  contrast  with  the  few 
small  structures  dating  from  the  seventeenth  century,  the 
period  seems  particularly  rich  in  buildings  architecturally,  as 
well  as  historically  important,  since  the  time  during  which 
the  colonists  were  breaking  ground  for  their  new  settlements 
was  inevitably  one  of  great  poverty,  and  the  first  buildings 
were  thrown  together  as  hurriedly  and  as  cheaply  as  could  be 
done,  and  perhaps  were  never  intended  to  be  anything  but 
temporary. 

So  in  reading  of  the  history  of  any  old  congregation,  we 
find  that  the  existing  structure  is  the  second,  third,  or  fourth 
built  by  the  organization,  and  we  find  also  that  the  first 
structure  lasted  but  a  few  years,  and  that  the  second  was  as  a 
rule  greatly  enlarged  and  much  repaired  before  it  was  replaced 
by  a  new  one. 

Rapidly  as  the  colonists  came  to  America  during  the 
seventeenth  century,  the  eighteenth  century  witnessed  an 
even  greater  influx,  and  with  the  thousands  of  new  settlers  who 

44 


4  vH- 


^^.•■U    .1.' 


/ 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      45 

came  every  year,  there  was  a  growth  in  material  resources 
and  in  wealth  more  than  commensurate  with  the  increase  in 
the  population;  and  with  prosperity  appeared  a  spirit  of 
religious  tolerance  which  had  been  until  then  unknown,  re- 
sulting in  the  formation  of  new  sects  and  new  congregations 
from  the  original  church  bodies. 

While  the  spiritual  and  intellectual  activities  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  were  largely  religious,  this  was  not  the  case  in  the 
eighteenth;  both  centuries  were  periods  of  great  unrest  and 
discontent  with  the  existing  order  of  things,  but  as  is  naturally 
the  case  with  people  who  have  property  interests  at  stake 
in  addition  to  their  immortal  souls,  the  yearning  for  religious 
change  and  betterment  became  gradually  transformed  into 
a  desire  for  greater  pohtical  freedom  and  activity.  During 
the  first  half  of  the  century,  the  conditions  incident  to  the  open- 
ing up  of  a  new  country  well  satisfied  these  desires :  there  were 
two  wars  with  the  French,  as  well  as  continued  frontier  bicker- 
ing with  the  Indians,  and  the  colonists  had  been  too  lately 
removed  from  England  to  realize  how  heavily  the  English 
hand  was  laid  upon  them,  but  from  about  1750  on,  external 
conditions  were  tranquil,  and  internal  dissensions  arose  and 
yearly  became  more  bitter  until  they  culminated  in  the  Revo- 
lution. 

Now  as  the  churches  had  been  from  the  very  beginning  of 
the  colonies  meeting  places  for  secular  as  well  as  for  religious 
bodies,  and  as  the  two  had  been  very  closely  bound  together 


46  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

through  the  entire  history  of  the  country  up  to  that  time, 
it  was  inevitable  that  the  churches  should  be  centres  of  the 
new  discontent,  and  we  find  that  Faneuil  Hall  in  Boston 
and  Independence  Hall  in  Philadelphia  were  not  more  used 
as  places  of  assembly  by  patriotic  bodies  than  were  the 
churches  whose  congregations  comprised  them.  Therefore 
the  history  of  the  churches  still  existing  from  the  eighteenth 
century  will  show  that  Old  North  and  Old  South  in  Boston, 
St.  Michael's  in  Charleston,  and  St.  Peter's  in  Philadelphia, 
have  as  much  political  as  ecclesiastical  history  connected  with 
them. 

Of  all  the  New  England  churches  the  congregations  of  Old 
North  and  Old  South  in  Boston  were  the  leaders  in  this  poHti- 
cal  activity,  partly  because  they  were  metropolitan  churches, 
and  partly  because  from  the  very  foundation  of  these  congrega- 
tions they  had  been  composed  of  men  of  unusual  intellectual 
vigor  and  of  independence  of  thought.  Both  were  offshoots 
of  the  first  congregation  in  Boston,  and  their  separation  from 
the  parent  body  was  caused  by  political  dissension  rather  than 
for  economic  or  religious  reasons.  Of  the  two,  Old  North  was 
the  older  congregation;  it  was  founded  in  1650  because  of 
factions  arising  among  members  of  the  First  Church  over 
the  execution  of  Charles  I,  and  the  new  church,  known 
oflScially  as  the  Second  Church  of  Christ,  was,  because  of  the 
geographical  location  of  its  building,  called  the  North  Church, 
and  later  *'01d  North."    The  first  church  building  was  erected 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      47 

about  1652,  and  is  described  as  having  been  a  large,  square 
structure  with  a  high  pulpit  and  high-backed  pews,  some  of 
which  had  doors  which  led  into  a  side  street;  a  matter  of 
some  convenience,  it  would  seem,  during  the  two-hour  sermons 
of  the  early  ministers.  In  1673  it  was  burned  down  and  re- 
placed by  a  larger  building  with  a  low  belfry,  which  lasted  ap- 
parently until  its  destruction  by  the  British  forces  during  the 
siege  of  Boston  in  the  years  1775  and  1776.  The  siege  was  so 
closely  maintained  and  the  winter  so  cold  that  it  became 
necessary  to  tear  down  a  certain  number  of  the  old  structures 
for  fuel,  and  the  Old  North  Church  was  selected  as  one  of  these 
because  its  congregation  had  taken  so  forward  a  part  in  Revo- 
lutionary activities. 

The  facts  regarding  the  old  church  appear  thus  far  to  be 
fairly  clear,  but  there  is  certainly  no  other  of  the  prominent 
early  buildings  about  whose  date  of  erection  and  designer 
there  has  been  so  much  confusion  as  Old  North.  "The  Geor- 
gian Period"  attributes  it  to  Charles  Bullfinch,  and  dates  it 
in  the  nineteenth  century;  various  ecclesiastical  histories 
give  different  dates  for  its  erection,  usually  prior  to  the  date 
that  they  assign  for  the  destruction  of  the  older  building,  and 
after  a  careful  study  of  the  subject  the  facts  seem  to  be  as 
follows:  some  time  early  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  con- 
gregation of  the  Second  Church,  or  Old  North,  split,  and  the 
seceding  faction  erected  a  building  known  as  the  New  Brick 
Church.    This  structure  was  erected  in  1723  and  was  designed 


48  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

by  a  Boston  print  seller  and  draughtsman  named  William 
Price.  Price  had  made  a  study  of  the  London  churches  of 
which  Sir  Christopher  Wren  was  the  architect,  and,  though 
apparently  without  technical  training,  made  the  drawings 
for  this  building  as  a  result  of  those  studies.  There  is  a  story 
to  the  effect  that  the  present  building,  known  as  Old  North, 
was  designed  by  Sir  Christopher  Wren,  which  seems  to  have 
had  no  other  foundation  than  that  given  above,  and  while  one 
finds  in  the  church  histories  of  many  of  the  older  American 
churches  that  Wren  was  their  architect,  there  seems  to  have 
been  not  the  shghtest  foundation  for  any  of  them,  and  ap- 
parently the  only  existing  American  church  which  was  not  of 
native  design  is  St.  Michael's  at  Charleston. 

Now  when  the  Old  North  Church  was  burned  down  in  1776 
its  congregation  was  invited  to  worship  with  that  of  the  New 
Brick  Church;  the  two  were  reunited  after  fifty  years  of 
separate  existence,  and  the  congregation  of  Old  North  being 
the  older  and  more  famous  of  the  two,  the  name  seems  to  have 
been  transferred  to  the  New  Brick  Church,  which  is  apparently 
the  one  now  known  as  Old  North.  Another  story  attributing 
the  design  to  Charles  Bullfinch  appears  to  have  arisen  from  the 
fact  that  early  in  the  nineteenth  century  he  made  designs  for 
the  reconstruction  or  restoration  of  the  old  building,  and  it 
is  said  that  when  the  tower  blew  down,  in  1804,  it  was  re- 
constructed from  these  designs. 

The  writer  feels  reasonably  certain  that  1723  is  the  correct 


OLD    NORTH    CHURCH,    BOSTON,   MASS. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      49 

date  for  the  erection  of  the  church,  and  that  William  Price 
was  the  designer,  but  since  the  congregation  of  the  older 
North  Church,  the  New  Brick  Church,  and  the  New  North 
Church  were  at  various  times  identical  there  has  been  fertile 
ground  for  confusion  and  error. 

Among  the  ministers  who  were  at  various  times  in  charge 
of  this  congregation  were  two  who  stand  out  with  prominence: 
the  Reverend  Increase  Mather,  the  third  incumbent,  and 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson;  Increase  Mather  was  perhaps  the 
greatest  of  the  early  New  England  divines,  a  man  of  eloquence, 
culture,  and  abihty,  a  very  different  type  from  his  son.  Cotton 
Mather  of  Salem,  of  witchcraft  notoriety;  of  Emerson  nothing 
need  be  said. 

The  congregation  of  Old  North  was,  prior  to  the  Revolution- 
ary War,  one  of  the  most  active  in  fomenting  rebellion  against 
the  English  crown;  it  was  distinctly  a  civic  church  of  the  city 
of  Boston,  and  not  one  of  the  churches  dependent  upon  the 
imposed  government  by  the  British  officials.  It  was  even 
employed  as  a  firehouse  and  public  arsenal  by  the  corporation 
of  the  city,  and  it  may  be  worth  recalling  also  that  it  was 
from  the  steeple  of  Old  North  that  the  lamps  to  signal  Paul 
Revere  were  hung  —  "One  if  by  land,  and  two  if  by  sea." 
Since  the  Revolution  the  church  history  has  been  one  of  quiet 
activities  and  without  particular  points  of  interest  to  the  general 
reader. 

Architecturally,  the  quahty  of  the  building  depends,  as  in 


50  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

many  of  the  other  old  churches,  upon  its  tower  and  the  design 
of  the  interior;  the  body  of  the  building  is  a  simple,  rec- 
tangular structure  with  two  tiers  of  circular  headed  windows; 
the  tower  is  an  excellent  piece  of  design:  slim,  light,  and 
elegant,  the  lower  portion  of  brick,  and  the  upper  part  of  wood, 
and  although  its  succeeding  stages  are  stepped  back  in  the 
frankest  way,  they  have  no  tendency  in  appearance  to  "tele- 
scope ";  the  interior  is  perhaps  more  interesting  than  excellent; 
the  superimposed  order  with  square  columns,  the  low^er  one 
supporting  the  balcony  paneled,  and  the  upper  one  fluted, 
is  not  particularly  well  proportioned,  and  the  plaster-vaulted 
ceiling  is  so  obviously  not  structural  that  the  building  loses  in 
dignity.  The  design,  while  it  has  the  inherent  charm  of  most 
old  work,  is  evidently  the  product  of  an  untrained  man,  and 
it  is  a  subject  remarkable  for  archeological,  rather  than  ar- 
chitectural, value. 

Not  very  dissimilar  from  the  Old  North  Church  in  Boston 
is  Trinity  Church  at  Newport,  Rhode  Island,  which  is  re- 
ported to  have  been  built  in  1726,  three  years  after  the 
Boston  church;  and  it  seems  extremely  probable  that  it  was 
architecturally  greatly  influenced  by  the  older  building.  Its 
history  is  not  without  a  certain  curious  interest:  the  parish 
was  organized  by  Sir  Francis  Nicholson,  a  Lieutenant  Gov- 
ernor of  New  York  in  1688,  but  it  was  necessary  for  him  first 
to  secure  permission  to  form  it  from  Governor  Andros  of 
Massachusetts,  and  although  the  parish  was  then  organized, 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      51 

no  church  structure  was  erected  until  1702,  and  the  church 
had  apparently  no  rector  until  that  time. 

Following  the  custom  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  the 
American  colonies,  the  organizers  of  the  parish  sent  to  London 
for  a  rector,  and  the  Bishop  of  London,  who  was  bishop  of  the 
colonies  as  well,  appointed  the  Reverend  James  Honeyman. 
Queen  Anne  gave  the  bell  to  the  church;  royal  gifts  appear 
to  have  been  more  or  less  the  custom  when  new  parishes  were 
begun  in  the  colonies,  and  we  find  that  most  of  the  American 
parishes  of  very  early  date  possess  a  bell,  a  communion  set, 
or  a  lectern,  or  other  piece  of  church  furniture,  contributed 
by  the  head  of  the  Church  of  England  to  the  new  foundation. 
Peter  Harrison  is  reported  to  have  been  the  architect  of  this 
building,  but  as  Peter  Harrison  has  been  also  given  as  the 
architect  of  King's  Chapel,  Boston,  and  other  churches  built 
toward  the  latter  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  it  seems  im- 
probable that  he  was  designing  at  this  early  date,  nor  does  the 
building  itself  bear  any  internal  evidence  of  being  his  design. 
The  story  that  he  was  the  architect  for  this  church  building 
seems  no  more  probable  than  that  it  was  designed  by  Sir 
Christopher  Wren,  which  is  another  legend  which  has  gained 
some  credence.  There  seems  to  be  pretty  definite  evidence 
that  Old  North  Church  was  designed  by  William  Price,  and 
Trinity  was  so  evidently  influenced  by  the  architecture  of  the 
older  building,  resembling  it  so  greatly  both  in  the  interior 
and  exterior,  that  the  writer  is  pretty  well  convinced  that  either 


52      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

the  one  church  was  a  copy  from  the  other,  or  that  the  architect 
was  the  same  person.  The  identification  of  pictures  by  in- 
ternal evidence  and  their  assignment  to  different  painters,  on 
this  ground  alone,  and  without  documentary  proof,  and  with- 
out signature,  has  long  been  accepted  as  a  rational  method 
of  procedure;  the  work  of  one  architect  differs  from  that  of 
another  quite  as  definitely  as  does  the  work  of  one  painter 
from  another,  so  that  in  modern  times  we  would  find  it  not  at 
all  difficult  to  assign  to  McKim,  Mead,  and  White,  let  us  say, 
or  to  Cram,  Goodhue,  and  Ferguson,  all  the  works  of  their 
maturer  periods  without  much  liability  of  error,  and  a  similar 
practice  applied  to  these  two  old  churches  would  be  sufficient 
to  convince  an  architect,  at  least,  that  if  they  were  not  the 
work  of  the  same  hands,  one  was  a  distinct  copy  from  the 
other. 

The  old  building  of  Trinity  Church  has,  like  most  of  the 
pre-Revolutionary  churches,  had  a  somewhat  disturbed  career; 
in  1729,  the  Reverend  George  Berkeley,  Bishop  of  Cloyne, 
who  was  the  author  of  the  poem  beginning,  "Westward  the 
course  of  empire  makes  its  way,"  started  for  the  Bermudas 
with  the  cause  of  education  in  view,  but  encountering  a  severe 
storm  the  vessel  was  driven  from  its  course,  and  the  captain 
finally  came  into  Newport  harbor  one  Sunday  morning.  The 
Reverend  Mr.  Honeyman,  being  apprised  of  his  arrival  during 
services,  went  with  his  congregation  in  a  body  to  meet  the 
distinguished  clergyman,  and  in  appreciation  of  the  reception 


TRINITY    CHURCH,   NEWPORT,    R.    I. 


EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES  53 

which  he  met,  the  Bishop  of  Cloyne  presented  the  organ  to  the 
church. 

During  the  Revokitionary  War,  Newport  was  held  for  some 
time  by  the  British,  and  the  rebel  parishioners  left  the  town. 
After  the  Continental  forces  reentered  the  city,  the  insignia 
of  the  royal  family  of  England,  which  had  hitherto  decorated 
the  church  wall,  were  torn  from  it  and  used  for  targets  for 
cannon  practice.  Little  other  alteration  has  been  made  in  the 
decorated  portions  of  the  building,  although  in  1762  the  body 
of  the  church  was  sawn  in  two  and  the  back  moved  up  and  the 
space  between  the  rear  and  front  portions  filled  in,  in  con- 
formity with  the  older  work.  The  chances  for  its  preservation 
are  good,  since  as  long  as  Newport  continues  to  be  the  fashion- 
able summer  resort  it  is  to-day,  the  old  church  will  probably 
be  preserved  by  its  congregation  as  a  sort  of  monumental 
bric-a-brac.  The  tower  is  hardly  inferior  to  that  of  the  Old 
North  Church,  although  built  of  wood,  and  the  interior  is 
rather  more  attractive  than  the  older  one.  It  is  one  of  the 
few  old  churches  in  which  superimposed  orders  were  used,  the 
lower  to  support  the  gallery,  and  the  upper  to  support  a 
vaulted  ceiling,  and  it  is  the  only  church  other  than  Old  North 
in  which  the  columns  of  this  order  were  square. 

The  resemblance  to  Old  North  is  further  heightened  by 
the  fact  that  the  lower  order  had  paneled  sides,  and  the  columns 
of  the  upper  order  were  fluted.  The  general  effect  of  the  in- 
terior is  interesting,  although  not  very  dignified,  since  the 


54  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

superfluity  of  vaulting  is  restless  and  disturbing,  specially  in  a 
building  so  obviously  of  frame.  Many  of  the  accessories  of  the 
interior  are  both  old  and  well  designed,  notably  the  pulpit 
canopy  and  the  candelabra,  and  the  old  square  pews  still 
remain  in  their  original  positions,  instead  of  the  present  "slip" 
type  which  James  Fenimore  Cooper  so  deplored  as  a  modern 
innovation. 

Of  all  the  early  American  churches  there  is  none  which 
has  played  so  prominent  a  part  in  civic  affairs  as  "Old  South, " 
in  Boston.  From  the  time  when  its  congregation  was  formed 
it  has  been  a  centre,  not  so  much  for  religious  as  for  political 
activities  of  the  same  constructive  kind  that  have  gone  to 
make  the  United  Staties  of  to-day.  Judged  by  modern 
standards,  the  men  who  founded  it  could  hardly  have  been 
called  largely  tolerant,  but  in  New  England,  in  the  middle  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  they  were  considered  so  broad- 
minded  as  almost  deserving  to  be  cast  without  the  pale  of 
recognized  Christianity  into  the  outer  darkness  with  the 
Quakers,  Baptists,  and  Episcopalians.  As  has  been  before  re- 
corded, church  membership  was  a  necessary  qualification  to 
citizenship,  but  as  the  Massachusetts  colony  grew,  church 
membership  became  more  and  more  difficult  to  obtain,  until 
the  colony  became  a  sort  of  religious  aristocracy  with  a  large 
portion,  if  not  a  majority,  of  its  subjects  disfranchised  because 
they  were  dissenters  from  the  covenanting  churches. 

In  1662  the  General  Synod  of  Massachusetts  churches  was 


OLD    SOUTH    CHURCH,    BOSTON,    MASS. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      55 

convened  to  discuss  this  matter,  certain  of  the  citizens  holding 
that  baptism  was  the  only  necessary  requisite  for  citizenship, 
but  the  synod  recommended  that  church  membership  be  con- 
tinued as  the  condition.  Twenty-nine  of  the  members  of  the 
First  Chiu'ch  of  Boston,  including  the  most  respectable  among 
the  residents  of  the  city,  refused  to  agree  on  this  matter  and 
formed  the  third  congregation,  eventually  building  the  South 
Meeting  House.  In  accordance  with  the  requirements  of  the 
time,  it  was  necessary  to  obtain  from  the  other  churches  per- 
mission to  form  a  new  church;  this  was  denied,  and  permission 
was  then  asked  of  the  Governor  of  the  colony  to  build  a  church 
building.  The  Governor  again  denied  it,  but  the  selectmen 
of  Boston,  to  whom  the  twenty-nine  next  appealed,  granted 
it.  The  independence  of  authority  which  marked  the  proced- 
ure of  the  congregation  in  the  very  founding  of  this  church 
was  characteristic  of  it  throughout,  and  just  as  at  first  they 
appealed  from  the  supreme  authority  to  a  council  of  selectmen, 
so  later  they  appealed  from  the  Enghsh  Governor  of  the  colony 
to  the  assembly  of  the  state  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution. 

Their  first  structure  was  of  cedar,  two  stories  high,  with  a 
steeple  and  the  conventional  interior  of  the  time,  but  the  wives 
and  children  of  the  congregation  w^ere  forbidden  by  the  First 
Church  under  pain  of  excommunication  to  sever  their  con- 
nection from  the  parent  church,  and  it  was  not  until  1674  that 
the  general  council  of  the  colony  of  Massachusetts  permitted 
them  to  be  joined  with  the  male  members  of  their  family,  and 


56  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

the  bitterness  engendered  between  the  first  congregation  and 
the  third  (that  of  Old  South)  lasted  until  they  joined  together 
in  fighting  the  EpiscopaHans  when  these  attempted  to  estab- 
hsh  a  congregation  in  Boston.  It  is  a  curious  commentary  on 
the  habits  and  thought  of  that  day,  that  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  both  congregations  were  purely  dissenting  congregations, 
and  that  their  ministers  were  neither  ordained  nor  recognized 
by  the  Church  of  England,  each  of  these  churches  during  the 
course  of  their  squabble  appealed  to  the  Bishop  of  London  to 
back  it  up.  The  fight  between  the  congregations  ran  so  high 
that  when  Old  South  began  to  build  its  church,  some  years 
after  the  formation  of  its  congregation,  the  Governor  of  the 
colony  (being  a  member  of  the  First  Church)  endeavored  to 
stop  its  construction,  and  called  together  a  council  "to  con- 
sider the  danger  of  a  tumult;  some  persons  attempting  to  set 
up  an  edifice  for  public  worship  which  was  apprehended  by 
the  authority  to  be  detrimental  to  the  public  peace." 

During  the  days  of  the  witchcraft  delusion,  the  pastor  of 
Old  South,  the  Reverend  Samuel  Willard,  preached  very 
vigorously  against  the  cruelties  of  the  time,  and  compelled 
Judge  Sewall  to  confess  publicly  and  to  express  his  repentance 
for  the  part  he  had  taken.  This  was  but  another  instance  of 
the  sane  and  liberal  view  which  this  church  had  taken  in  public 
affairs  from  the  time  of  its  foundation,  and  it  seems  but  proper 
that  Benjamin  Franklin,  of  all  our  early  statesmen  the  sanest, 
kindest,  and  wisest,  should  have  been  baptized  in  this  church. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      57 

as  he  was  in  1706.  In  1730  the  second  building  for  the  con- 
gregation, the  present  edifice,  was  built,  the  designer  being 
Robert  Twelves.  It  was  built  of  brick  laid  in  Flemish  bond, 
the  steeple  continued  up  in  wood  to  the  height  of  one  hundred 
and  eighty  feet,  the  body  of  the  building  being  nearly  square 
with  a  double  row  of  windows,  the  plan  being  the  auditorium 
one  common  to  the  early  churches,  and  which  has  of  late  years 
come  into  favor  for  the  church  structures  of  some  of  our  sects. 

The  exterior  is  severely  plain,  and  the  spire,  while  agreeable 
enough,  has  nothing  of  the  grace  and  beauty  of  the  earlier 
ones  of  Old  North  and  Trinity  Church  in  Newport.  The  old- 
fashioned  pulpit  with  its  suspended  sounding  board  is  very 
beautifully  designed,  and  while  the  second  gallery  unquestion- 
ably hurts  the  appearance  of  the  interior,  it  is  said  to  be  of 
later  introduction  and  not  part  of  the  original  design.  The 
church  history  in  its  new  building  has  been  as  eventful  as  it 
was  in  the  old;  in  1740  the  noted  English  evangelist,  George 
Whitefield,  preached  there,  and  in  1745,  during  the  French 
and  Indian  War,  it  was  in  this  building  that  the  city  of  Boston 
held  a  mass  meeting  to  pray  for  divine  intervention  between 
them  and  a  French  fleet  then  on  its  way  to  destroy  the  city. 
The  story  goes  that  the  services  began  on  a  bright  and  sun- 
shiny day,  and  from  this  cloudless  sky  there  arose  a  terrible 
storm  which  destroyed  the  French  fleet,  and  every  member  of 
the  congregation  agreed  with  one  of  their  ministers,  the 
Reverend  Mr.  Burdett,  that  "it  was  from  this  pulpit  that  in 


68      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

earlier  times  went  hence  to  heaven  that  prayer  which  was 
answered  by  the  dispersion  and  utter  ruin  of  a  hostile  fleet 
of  France."  This  mass  meeting  was  probably  the  first  held  in 
South  Church;  mass  meetings  in  this  building  became  more 
and  more  usual,  and  it  was  customary  for  overflow  meetings 
in  Faneuil  Hall  to  be  held  in  this  building,  or,  when  the  meet- 
ings were  too  great  to  be  accommodated  in  Faneuil  Hall,  they 
were  held  in  the  larger  auditorium  of  Old  South.  On  June 
14,  1768,  the  meeting  was  held  there  which  sent  John  Hancock 
as  a  delegate  to  the  Governor  to  ask  that  the  Boston  port 
be  opened  again,  and  it  was  after  another  meeting  in  the  Old 
South,  on  December  14,  1773,  that  the  Boston  "tea  party" 
occurred.  During  the  winter  of  1774-75,  as  was  the  case  with 
Old  North,  it  felt  very  bitterly  the  enmity  inspired  in  the 
British  by  the  activities  of  its  congregation,  and  the  interior 
fittings  were  torn  out  and  burned,  and  the  floor  space  used 
as  a  riding  school  for  Burgoyne's  cavalry.  Until  1782  its 
congregation  worshipped  in  King's  Chapel,  their  old  feud 
with  the  Episcopalians  having  by  this  time  become  completely 
healed. 

The  building  is  no  longer  used  as  a  church,  but  belongs 
to  a  society  composed  of  Boston  women  who  keep  it  as  a  sort 
of  historical  museum.  They  have  not,  however,  changed  the 
building  in  any  important  part,  and  the  exterior  is  as  it  was 
originally  constructed,  with  the  interior  as  it  was  reconstructed 
after  the  Revolutionary  War. 


EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES  59 

King's  Chapel  was  the  first  edifice  erected  for  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church  in  New  England,  and  its  construction  was 
caused  not  by  any  crying  need  of  members  of  the  Church  of 
England  for  a  house  of  worship  of  their  own,  but  by  direct 
governmental  interposition.  The  British  Crown,  that  is  to 
say  the  Church  of  England,  sent  a  minister  of  the  estabhshed 
church  to  Boston,  together  with  members  of  the  commission 
appointed  by  King  James  II  to  preside  over  the  church  in  the 
colonies,  and  these  gentlemen  asked  permission  of  each  of  the 
congregations  then  owning  church  buildings  in  the  city  of 
Boston  to  worship  in  one  or  other  of  them,  but  although  nom- 
inally these  churches  were  still  in  some  way  connected  with, 
or  dependent  upon,  the  church  in  England,  the  commission  was 
curtly  refused,  and  services  were  finally  held  in  a  large  room 
of  the  Town  House  until  Governor  Andros  ordered  the  trustees 
of  Old  South  to  open  their  building  for  Episcopal  worship. 
The  first  services  held  in  Old  South  were  held  on  Good  Friday, 
March  4th,  in  1687.  The  forced  acquiescence  of  the  con- 
gregation of  Old  South  to  this  action  of  brotherly  love  was 
by  no  means  cheerful,  and  because  the  Episcopalians  were 
backed  up  by  the  Governor  of  the  colony,  they  did  not  trouble 
themselves  to  suit  the  convenience  of  the  congregation  which 
really  owned  Old  South.  Judge  Sewall  wrote  about  one  of 
their  meetings  as  follows:  *'Last  Sabbath  day,  March  27, 
Govr.  and  his  retinue  met  in  our  Meetingh  at  eleven;  broke 
off  half-past  two,  bee.  of  ye  sacrement  and  Mr.  Clark's  long 


60  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

sermon,  though  we  were  appointed  to  come  half -past  one; 
so  'twas  a  sad  sight  to  see  how  full  ye  street  was  with  people 
gazing  and  moving  to  and  fro,  bee.  had  no  entrance  into  ye 
house."  The  congregation  of  King's  Chapel  wanted  very 
earnestly  to  erect  a  building  of  their  own,  but  were  unable 
to  find  any  one  who  would  sell  them  property  enough  on  which 
to  build,  so  that  at  last  the  Governor  had  again  to  intervene, 
setting  aside  a  corner  of  the  burial  ground  for  their  use,  and 
the  first  building  was  completed  in  1689.  In  1710  it  was  en- 
larged to  twice  its  former  size,  and  in  its  remodeling  the  vestry 
stipulated  that  each  member  should  pay  the  cost  of  building 
his  own  pew;  this  was  accordingly  done,  but  without  any  uni- 
formity, so  that  the  interior  of  the  old  church  must  have 
presented  an  amusing  diversity  of  work.  Fronting  the  pulpit 
were  two  large  square  pews,  one  for  the  family  of  the  rector 
and  one  for  the  use  of  the  Governor  and  his  staff,  two  long 
pews  behind  them  were  reserved,  one  for  the  "Masters  of  the 
Vessels,"  and  one  for  eight  old  men  of  the  parish.  The  walls 
were  decorated  with  banners,  escutcheons,  and  coats  of  arms 
of  the  King  of  England,  of  the  nobihty  and  gentry  of  the  con- 
gregation, and  of  the  governor  of  the  province,  and  the  in- 
terior was  considered  so  magnificent  and  so  luxurious  as  to  be 
a  blot  upon  the  religion  of  Massachusetts. 

In  1741  it  was  decided  that  the  chapel  was  no  longer  large 
enough  to  accommodate  the  parish,  and  a  committee,  with 
Peter  Faneuil  as  treasurer,  was  appointed  to  raise  funds  for 


FIRST   CHURCH,    DEDHAM,    MASSACHUSETTS 


SPIRE  OF  THE  OLD  NORTH,  OR  CHRIST,  CHURCH, 
BOSTON 


SPIRE  OF  THE  FIRST  BAPTIST  CHURCH,  PROVIDENCE, 
RHODE  ISLAND 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      61 

a  new  building.  This  was  begun  in  1749,  and  occupied  in 
1753.  The  design  for  the  building  was  probably  made  by 
(Peter?)  Harrison,  an  architectural  amateur  whom  we  find 
spoken  about  in  connection  with  other  of  the  early  church 
structures,  and  the  church  history  states:  *'Mr.  Harrison,  of 
Rhode  Island,  a  gentleman  of  good  judgment  in  architecture, 
was  asked  to  oblige  the  parish  with  a  drawing  of  a  handsome 
church  agreeable  to  the  limits  set  forth."  The  drawings  are 
now  lost,  and  it  was  not  known  whether  they  were  very  closely 
followed,  but  as  we  do  know  the  congregation  was  well  pleased 
with  them,  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  they  were,  with  the 
exception  of  a  spire  which  was  part  of  the  original  design 
and  was  not  executed  for  lack  of  funds.  The  colonnade  around 
the  tower  which  distinguishes  this  building  from  any  of  the 
other  churches  of  the  same  age  was  not  part  of  the  original 
design,  but  was  added  in  1790,  and  the  cost  of  the  building 
without  this  colonnade  was  £2,500,  a  very  moderate  sum  for 
a  cut  stone  building  with  the  lovely  interior  that  it  possesses. 
The  interior  deserves  more  than  a  passing  glance;  it  is  one 
of  the  best-designed  classic  church  interiors  in  the  United 
States,  and  while  not  in  principle  very  dissimilar  from  those 
of  Old  North  and  Trinity  Church  in  Newport,  there  has  been 
so  much  more  regard  paid  to  structural  lines,  and  to  a  careful 
proportion  of  the  orders,  that  the  result  is  infinitely  superior. 
As  was  the  case  with  most  of  the  other  early  Episcopal  churches 
in  America,  the  supreme  head  of  the  church,  the  English  king 


62      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

or  queen,  personally  presented  certain  fittings  to  it;  King 
James  II  sent  the  original  congregation  a  pulpit  still  in  use  in 
the  church,  and  a  communion  service;  Queen  Anne  sent  a  red 
silk  damask  cushion  for  the  pulpit,  surplices  for  the  rector  and 
choir,  and  altar  Hnen ;  a  clock  was  presented  by  a  gentleman 
of  the  British  Society  in  Boston,  and  the  organ,  for  many  years 
the  best  in  America,  was  purchased  through  the  instrumen- 
tality of  the  great  composer  Handel.  In  1772  King  George  III 
presented  an  additional  communion  service  and  the  pulpit, 
and  King's  Chapel  was  regarded  as  more  or  less  the  royal  pet 
until  the  Revolution. 

The  congregation  originally  was  without  title,  but  the 
building  was  called  the  Queen's  Chapel,  and  in  1702  the 
name  was  changed  to  King's  Chapel.  Being  a  Tory  church,  it 
suffered  no  damage  during  the  British  occupancy  of  Boston, 
and  forgetting  the  old  feud  with  the  members  of  Old  South 
Church,  that  congregation  was  invited  to  worship  in  the 
chapel  until  its  own  building  could  be  restored,  and  for 
nearly  five  years  the  congregations  worshipped  in  the  same 
building.  Since  the  Revolution  practically  no  change  has 
been  made  in  the  structure,  except  that  the  Governor's  pew 
was  removed  and  the  royal  emblems  taken  down,  but  the 
chapel  is  no  longer  Episcopalian,  being  the  first  church  in  the 
United  States  to  become  openly  Unitarian. 

The  First  Church  at  Dedham,  Massachusetts,  is  most  typi- 
cal of  many  New  England  meeting  houses  of  its  time;   built 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  63 

in  1763,  without  any  designer  of  record,  its  dimensions  were 
laid  out  by  the  building  committee,  and  the  contractor  was 
directed  to  follow  them,  and  for  design  to  look  to  one  of  the 
London  churches  that  the  committee  admired.  Such,  at 
least,  is  the  story,  and  if  the  builder  had  actually  a  picture 
of  the  London  churches  before  him,  in  constructing  this  build- 
ing, he  was  either  very  incapable  or  wilfully  departed  from  the 
original  scheme,  for  there  is  no  London  church  which  bears 
any  resemblance  to  this  one.  In  1819-20  the  building  was 
altered,  the  tower  being  put  on  the  opposite  end,  and  the 
direction  of  the  roof  changed;  for  this  change,  likewise,  no 
architect  was  employed,  but  though  these  changes  were  of 
considerable  importance,  they  do  not  greatly  alter  the  char- 
acter of  the  old  building.  The  first  church  edifice  was  built 
in  1647,  and  in  1673  the  second  building  was  erected;  the 
third,  and  present  one,  having  been  begun  in  1763,  the  expense 
being  paid  for  by  the  sale  of  pews  on  the  first  floor,  and  it  may 
be  of  interest  to  notice  that  the  wealthiest  man  in  town  had 
the  first  choice,  the  next  wealthiest  second  choice,  and  so  on, 
their  order  being  determined  by  the  amount  of  taxes  which 
they  paid. 

These  pews  were  then  owned  by  the  family  as  long  as  they 
continued  to  support  the  minister.  The  structure  is  mainly 
interesting  because  it  is  so  similar  to  many  of  the  simpler 
country  churches  in  the  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth  cen- 
turies; it  was  one,  in  fact,  whose  design  was  duplicated  almost 


64      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

without  change,  and  while  it  is  a  suflSciently  dignified  and 
attractive  structure,  its  architectural  merit  is  by  no  means 
great,  nor  does  it  show  the  individuahty  of  the  Meeting  House 
at  Farmington. 

The  Meeting  House  at  Farmington  was  constructed  in  1771 
after  designs  by  Captain  Judah  WoodrufiP,  who  was  an  archi- 
tect and  builder  with  a  considerable  practice  in  and  about 
Farmington.  Although  this  is  reported  to  have  been  his  only 
church  structure,  its  influence  is  both  potent  and  far-reach- 
ing, and  certain  of  its  details  were  later  adapted  by  Asher 
Benjamin  to  some  of  the  designs  pubhshed  in  his  various 
books,  and  a  number  of  the  early  American  nineteenth  century 
churches  resemble  the  Farmington  church  to  a  marked  degree. 
We  happen  to  know  a  little  more  about  Captain  Woodruff 
than  we  do  of  any  of  the  other  architects  of  this  early  date. 
He  was  a  home  product,  captain  in  the  local  mihtia,  educated 
under  other  carpenters,  and  with  a  natural  taste  for  design 
stimulated  by  the  possession  of  the  very  excellent  books  on 
architecture  which  were  the  only  ones  which  then  existed,  and 
some  of  the  lovehest  of  the  old  Colonial  houses  which  still 
exist  in  New  England  were  the  product  of  his  hands.  He  was 
not  less  excellent  as  a  builder  than  as  an  architect,  and  this 
structure,  originally  built  in  1771,  has  never  been  reclap- 
boarded  since  its  erection,  and  even  half  the  roof  shingles 
originally  used  are  still  in  place.  The  congregation  was  an 
old  one,  and  this  was  its  third  house  of  worship.     The  other 


THE    MEETING    HOUSE,    FARMINGTON,    CONN. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      65 

two  had  been,  as  was  usual  in  New  England,  erected  in  the 
centre  of  the  village,  but  the  location  was  changed  when  the 
third  structure  was  built,  and  the  hipped  roof,  up  to  then  com- 
mon in  the  country  districts  of  New  England,  was  changed  to  a 
gable  roof,  although  the  auditorium  plan,  with  a  principal  en- 
trance at  the  centre,  was  retained.  The  west  porch  is  probably 
a  later  addition  at  the  time  of  the  Greek  Revival,  and  the  inte- 
rior hkewise  bears  evidence  of  a  corresponding  remodeling,  the 
curious  turned  posts  which  support  the  gallery,  the  "shp'* 
pews,  and  the  organ  having  been  put  in  place  about  1836, 
although  the  original  pulpit  was  retained  until  1901,  when  the 
present  pulpit  was  installed  in  memory  of  Noah  Porter. 

Captain  Woodruff  is  said  to  have  gone  to  an  old  church  in 
Wethersfield  for  his  inspiration,  but  his  construction  must 
have  been  surely  a  product  of  his  own  ingenuity;  it  was  so 
excellent  that  the  ridge  pole  has  sagged  only  an  inch  and  a 
half  in  the  one  hundred  and  forty  years  of  the  life  of  the  church. 
The  hght  columns  which  support  the  belfry  are  only  the  tops 
of  posts  which  run  down  through  the  body  of  the  tower  for 
twenty -five  feet,  and  are  so  braced  and  tied  together  that  they 
are  still  strong  and  plumb,  and  the  care  used  throughout  the 
construction  is  evident  from  the  fact  that  the  heads  of  the 
hand-wrought  bolts  used  to  join  it  together  bear  marks  corre- 
sponding with  marks  on  the  edges  of  the  hole  through  which 
they  were  driven. 

The  last  of  the  churches  illustrated  in  this  chapter  is  the 


66  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

First  Baptist  Church  at  Providence,  Rhode  Island.  It  will 
be  recalled  that  when  Roger  Williams  was  expelled  from 
Massachusetts  he  was  instrumental  in  founding  the  Baptist 
Church  in  Rhode  Island,  and  though  in  his  latter  days 
he  was  hardly  in  good  standing  even  with  that  church, 
the  congregation  which  he  founded  (the  oldest  Baptist  con- 
gregation of  the  United  States)  was  that  which  at  present  oc- 
cupies this,  the  oldest  Baptist  Church  building  still  existing. 
It  was  designed  by  a  Mr.  Joseph  Brown,  of  Providence,  and 
begun  in  1775;  the  designer  was  not  by  profession  an  architect 
or  a  builder,  but  was  a  merchant  with  a  taste  for  the  higher 
education;  he  was  a  member  of  the  American  Academy  of 
Arts  and  Sciences,  and  a  trustee  of  Brown  University.  An 
interesting  side  light  on  the  methods  of  design  in  those  days  is 
afforded  by  the  history  of  this  building.  Mr.  Joseph  Brown 
and  Mr.  Hammond,  both  influential  men  in  the  congregation, 
were  sent  to  Boston  "in  order  to  view  the  different  churches 
and  make  a  memoranda  of  their  several  dimensions  and  forms 
of  architecture."  Mr.  Brown,  being  something  of  a  draughts- 
man, became  responsible  for  this  agreeable  church  structure, 
which  bears  testimony  in  a  general  way  to  the  effect  of  this 
Boston  visit  on  the  designer,  although  it  resembles  in  detail 
none  of  the  existing  Boston  churches.  The  tower  is  very 
superior,  and  the  interior  is  not  unpleasant,  but  the  high 
basement,  with  the  bad  entrance  at  the  base  of  the  tower,  de- 
tracts very  greatly  from  its  effect,  and  it  seems  to  the  writer 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      67 

open  to  question  as  to  whether  the  tower  was  part  of  the 
original  design,  as  it  resembles  rather  the  work  of  the  early 
nineteenth  century  than  the  mid-eighteenth  century  Boston 
designs.  Perhaps  the  most  attractive  single  feature  of  the 
interior  is  the  wonderful  cut-glass  chandelier,  one  of  the  hand- 
somest pieces  of  Colonial  design  in  hghting  fixtures  which  is 
still  preserved,  and  the  contrast  between  this  chandelier  and 
the  gas  fixtures  of  Victorian  design  projecting  from  the  gal- 
leries between  the  columns  is  startling  to  see,  and  is  eloquent 
though  mute  testimony  to  the  degeneracy  of  the  Victorian 
period.  The  history  of  the  congregation  has  been  a  quiet 
and  peaceful  one,  remote  from  wars  and  rumors  of  wars,  and 
was  for  many  years  closely  connected  with  that  of  Brown 
University,  the  commencements  of  the  university  having  been 
held  in  this  building  until  very  recently. 

This  completes  the  list  of  eighteenth  century  churches 
illustrated,  but  does  not  completely  exhaust  the  available  ma- 
terial, and  it  may  be  worth  while  to  note  here  the  names  of 
some  of  the  others  which  have  still  been  preserved. 

Christ  Church  in  Cambridge,  and  the  Jewish  Synagogue  in 
Newport,  Rhode  Island,  were  both  designed  by  Peter  Har- 
rison, presumably  the  same  Harrison  who  designed  King's 
Chapel,  since  Christ  Church  is  not  dissimilar  in  character  from 
King's  Chapel,  and  the  interior  of  the  Jewish  Synagogue  also 
resembles  it.  Neither  of  these  two  buildings,  however,  has 
much  historical  importance,  except  that  the  synagogue  is  the 


68  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

oldest  Jewish  place  of  worship  still  existing  in  this  country, 
and,  as  already  said,  they  are  not  especially  valuable  in  design. 

St.  Michael's,  at  Marblehead,  is  quaint  without  being 
otherwise  excellent,  and  although  it  was  built  in  1714,  is  with- 
out especial  historic  interest.  It  was  one  of  the  earliest 
Episcopal  churches  in  New  England,  and  was  erected  because 
the  seafaring  population  was  strong  and  was  closely  affiliated 
with  the  Enghsh  church;  in  fact  twenty-nine  out  of  the  original 
thirty-three  men  of  the  congregation  were  sea  captains. 

The  Congregational  Church  at  Southampton,  Massachu- 
setts, built  in  1788;  the  Congregational  Church  at  Enfield, 
Massachusetts,  built  in  1787;  the  church  at  West  Springfield, 
built  in  1799;  that  at  Longmeadow,  built  in  1767;  that  at  East 
Haddam,  built  in  1794;  and  that  of  Wethersfield,  Connecticut, 
built  in  1761 ;  complete  the  list  known  to  the  writer,  but  none 
of  these  buildings  is  either  historically  or  architecturally  in- 
teresting, and  to  illustrate  them  would  be  to  repeat  the  designs 
of  some  of  those  already  shown,  but  less  well  done,  and  they 
have  therefore  not  been  photographed,  the  writer  believing 
that  the  ground  has  been  very  well  covered,  both  historically 
and  architecturally,  without  them. 


THE    FIRST    BAPTIST    CHURCH,    PROVIDENCE,    R.    1. 


CHAPTER  IV 

SOUTHERN   CHURCHES   OF   THE   EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY 

THE  southern  churches  of  this  period  were  mainly  of 
brick  in  Virginia  and  North  Carolina,  and  of  stone  or 
stucco  in  South  Carohna  and  Georgia,  and  the  large 
majority  were  small,  uninteresting,  and  without  historical  im- 
portance. In  Virginia,  for  example,  there  remain  perhaps  a 
dozen  churches  which  are  not  illustrated  in  this  book,  such 
as  St.  Paul's  in  Norfolk,  Blandford  Church,  St.  John's  in 
Richmond,  Christ  Church  in  Lancaster  County,  and  Yeoco- 
mico  Church  in  Westmoreland  County.  With  the  exception 
of  St.  John's  in  Richmond  all  of  these  were  small  brick  struc- 
tures without  towers,  and  with  the  plainest  possible  interiors 
and  exteriors;  while  in  some  cases  distinguished  men  were 
noted  among  their  parishioners,  none  of  these  churches  ever 
was  a  centre  of  historical  interest  comparable  with  Bruton 
Parish  Church,  Christ  Church  in  Alexandria,  or  St.  Michael's 
in  Charleston. 

The  oldest  of  the  eighteenth  century  churches  illustrated 
is  the  Bruton  Parish  Church,  at  WilUamsburg,  Virginia.  Wil- 
liamsburg became  the  Colonial  capital  of  the  Virginia  colony 
in  1699,  and  was  a  town  of  marked  importance  throughout  the 


70  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

Colonial  period ;  to-day  it  is  almost  unknown,  because  its  loca- 
tion has  no  commercial  value,  and  the  removal  of  the  legisla- 
ture to  Richmond  deprived  it  of   its   principal   reason   for 
existence.     In  Colonial  times,  however,  it  was  a  very  important 
little  city;  the  parish  was  founded  in  1674;  the  College  of 
William  and  Mary  was  estabhshed  there  in  1693,  this  being, 
next  to  Harvard,  the  oldest  American  college.     The  parish 
was  formed  from  three  of  the  oldest  of  the  Virginia  parishes, 
originally  known  as  Middle  Plantation,  Harup,  and  Marston; 
its  present  name,  *'Bruton,"  was  a  mark  of  respect  to  one  of 
its  early  parishioners.  Sir  James  Ludlow,   whose   birthplace 
was  Bruton,  Somerset  County,  England.     The  present  build- 
ing was  the  third  of  a  series  of  churches  located  on  the  same 
site,  and  some  of  the  furnishings  and  foundations  of  the  earlier 
buildings  were  incorporated  into  the  structure,  as  was  proven 
by  the  discovery  of  an   old  cornerstone   under  the  present 
building  bearing  the  following  inscription:    "November  ye 
29th,  1683;  Whereas  ye  Brick  Church  at  Middle  Plantation  is 
now  finished.  It  is  ordered  that  all  ye  inhabitants  of  ye  said 
Parish  do  for  the  future  repair  thither  to  hear  Divine  Service 
and  ye  Word  of  God  preached;  and  that  Mr.  Rowland  Jones, 
Minister,  do  dedicate  ye  said  Church,  ye  sixth  of  January  next, 
being  ye  Epiphany." 

About  its  designer  we  have  no  certain  information;  it 
was  said  that  the  then  Governor  of  the  colony,  Alexander 
Spotswood,  made  and  furnished  the  drawings,  and  from  what 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  71 

we  know  of  the  activities  of  the  gentleman  amateur  in  art 
of  that  day,  it  seems  quite  Hkely  that  this  was  the  case.  We 
do  know  just  how  funds  were  provided:  Governor  Spotswood 
proposed  that  the  vestry  should  build  the  two  ends  of  the 
church,  and  promised  that  the  government  "would  take  care 
of  the  wings  and  intervening  part."  The  House  of  Burgesses 
agreed  to  appropriate  a  sufficient  sum  of  money  to  build  pews 
for  the  Governor,  Coimcil,  and  the  House  of  Burgesses,  and 
appointed  a  committee  to  cooperate  with  the  vestry  in  its 
construction.  The  land  for  the  church  and  the  churchyard 
surrounding  it  and  twenty  pounds  toward  the  construction  of 
the  building  were  given  by  Colonel  John  Page,  who  was  allowed 
to  put  up  a  pew  in  the  chancel. 

The  structure  was  proceeded  with  about  as  outlined  in 
Governor  Spotswood's  plan,  the  Governor  himseK  paying  for 
twenty-two  feet  of  nave,  while  the  wings  and  crossing  were 
built  at  the  expense  of  the  House  of  Burgesses  who  fixed  by 
resolution  the  length  of  the  transepts  at  nineteen  feet.  The 
church  was  completed  and  the  first  services  held  in  1715,  but 
as  originally  built  this  did  not  include  the  tower,  which  was 
constructed  in  1769,  and  at  the  same  time  the  wings  were 
reduced  from  nineteen  feet  projection  to  fourteen  and  one- 
half  feet;  exclusive  of  these  the  size  of  the  church  was  twenty- 
eight  feet  by  seventy-five  feet.  In  1839  the  pulpit  was 
removed  and  the  interior  of  the  church  divided  up  to  form  a 
Sunday-school,  but  in  1905  the  old  pulpit  and  pews  were  re- 


72  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

placed  in  their  former  positions,  and  at  that  time  also  the 
canopy  with  its  velvet  curtain,  embroidered  with  the  name 
of  Alexander  Spots  wood,  was  unearthed  and  restored  to  its 
position  over  the  Governor's  pew. 

The  historical  associations  of  the  church,  because  of  its 
position  at  the  Colonial  capital  of  Virginia,  are  many.  The 
original  bell  was  presented  by  Queen  Anne,  although  the  pres- 
ent one  was  given  by  a  member  of  the  parish  in  1761;  the 
Bible  now  used  was  given  by  Edward  VII,  and  the  lectern 
by  President  Roosevelt  at  the  time  of  the  restoration  of  the 
church,  in  memory  of  the  three  hundredth  anniversary  of  the 
estabUshment  of  the  EngUsh  church  in  America.  Among  the 
members  of  the  church  were  many  of  the  men  most  famous 
in  the  early  days  of  the  colony:  Lord  Botetort,  Lord  Dun- 
more,  and  others  of  the  royal  governors  worshipped  here, 
as  did  the  Lees,  Peyton  Randolph,  Patrick  Henry,  and  George 
Washington;  while  during  the  War  of  the  Rebelhon  the  church 
was  used  as  a  hospital. 

As  regards  the  exterior,  the  architecture  is  of  the  typical 
Virginia  type:  brick  laid  in  Flemish  bond,  a  cornice  greatly 
reduced  from  the  usual  Colonial  pattern,  and  the  tower  some- 
what low  and  heavy;  while  the  interior,  simple  as  it  is,  is  one 
of  the  most  attractive  in  America.  The  details  of  the  wood- 
work of  the  pews  with  their  brass  name-plates,  of  the  canopies 
over  the  Governor's  pew  and  pulpit,  and  of  the  pulpit  itself, 
are  perfect  examples  of  Colonial  quahty;  while  the  apparently 


J 


ST.    PAUL  S    CHURCH,    EDENTON,    N.    C, 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  7S 

imintentional  contrast  between  the  simple  white  walls  and  the 
rich  colors  of  the  woodwork  and  hangings  is  far  better  than 
the  stencil  patterns  of  Greek  design  commonly  employed  to 
decorate  the  old  American  churches. 

St.  Paul's  Church,  Edenton,  North  Carohna,  while  actually 
located  in  that  state,  should  be  considered  as  one  of  the  early 
group  of  Virginia  churches,  both  because  of  its  geographical 
location  close  to  the  Virginia  line,  and  its  architectural  and 
historical  associations,  which  are  with  Virginia  rather  than  with 
North  Carohna.  It  is  also,  with  the  exception  of  the  Home 
Moravian  Church  at  Winston-Salem,  and  St.  Thomas's  at 
Bath,  the  only  eighteenth  century  church  in  the  state. 

St.  Thomas's  is  a  plain,  barnhke  structure  of  brick  laid  up 
in  Flemish  bond,  without  a  tower,  without  an  interesting 
doorway  or  an  interesting  interior,  and  while  perhaps  the 
oldest  church  structure,  having  been  begun  in  1734,  it  is 
absolutely  without  any  other  reason  for  notice,  and  was  typical 
of  the  Virginia  group  of  churches,  all  of  them  at  the  beginning 
very  much  alike  any  dissimilarities  in  appearance  having  been 
due  to  later  additions,  such  as  transepts,  aisles,  and  towers. 
St.  Paul's,  begun  in  1735,  was  substantially  built  of  brick,  and 
in  the  main  has  been  unchanged  since  its  erection;  it  is  still 
in  good  repair.  The  construction,  however,  dragged  along 
for  a  number  of  years,  and  the  building  was  not  occupied 
until  1760.  The  floor  was  originally  of  tile,  and  burials  were 
made  in  vaults  below  the  floor.    These  are  no  longer  permitted. 


74  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

and  the  present  floor  is  of  wood.  The  building  is  sixty  feet 
long  by  forty  feet  wide  within  the  walls,  the  side  walls  twenty 
feet  high,  but  as  to  its  architect  or  designer  there  is  no  evidence. 
Its  construction  was  opposed  by  many  of  the  members  of  the 
parish,  and  was  further  retarded  by  the  fact  that  six  chapels 
had  been  built  in  various  parts  of  the  parish  in  1741,  and  the 
congregation  thus  decentrahzed  had  no  particular  inclination 
to  support  either  morally  or  financially  the  mother  edifice. 
As  bearing  on  the  methods  of  the  construction  of  the  time,  the 
following  minutes  of  the  vestry,  which  constitute  a  specifica- 
tion for  the  six  chapels,  may  be  of  interest:  "The  dimensions 
as  here  mentioned,  viz :  Thirty -five  foot  long  and  Twenty-two 
foot  and  a  half  wide.  Eleven  foot  in  the  pitch  between  Sill  and 
Plate,  and  a  roof;  workmanlike,  near  a  squear,  and  to  be  good 
fraim  Gott  out  of  Good  Timbers  and  covered  with  Good 
Sipress  shingles  and  good  Sleepers  and  flowers  of  good  plank 
and  seated  with  Good  plank;  with  three  Windows  suitable, 
with  a  pulpit  and  all  things  suitable.'*  Can  one  wonder  that 
when  the  design  and  construction  of  church  buildings  were 
thus  limited  by  orders  of  a  vestry  totally  unacquainted  with 
the  art  of  construction  the  names  of  the  architects  have  been 
forgotten?  And  is  it  not  remarkable  that  with  such  fixed 
hmitations,  which  in  every  case  where  the  records  of  early 
construction  have  been  preserved  we  find  to  have  been  im- 
posed upon  the  unhappy  designer,  Colonial  architecture  at- 
tained such  a  tremendous  quaHty? 


ST.    MICHAEL  S    CHURCH,    CHARLESTON,    S.    C. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      75 

St.  Paul's  parish  was  organized  in  1701,  and  it  is  the  oldest 
organization  either  civic  or  rehgious  in  North  Carolina;  its 
first  church  building,  begun  in  the  year  of  the  organization  of 
the  parish,  was  the  first  church  built  in  the  province.  The 
present  building  was  constructed  by  voluntary  subscription 
of  the  parish,  and  the  accounts  of  the  subscription  were  kept 
by  an  anonymous  secretary,  whose  entry  in  the  parish  book 
shows:  "my  own  subscription  £100,"  which  was,  with  one 
other  of  similar  amount,  the  largest  single  subscription;  but 
the  vestry,  not  securing  money  enough  in  this  way,  eventually 
charged  a  tax  levy  on  the  whole  parish,  and  because  of  the 
civic  powers  which  the  vestries  of  the  various  churches  had 
arrogated  to  themselves  the  money  was  thus  collected. 

This  method  of  collecting  the  money  seems  to  have  been 
not  only  satisfactory,  but  desired  by  the  people  of  the  parish, 
and  the  alternate  method,  that  of  selling  the  pews,  was  peti- 
tioned against  in  the  assembly  so  that  all  would  have  equal 
rights  in  the  house  of  worship,  but  the  vestry  did  occasionally 
grant  permission  to  various  individuals  to  build  pews  in  the 
chapel.  Governor  Nicholson,  Colonel  Edward  Moseley,  and 
the  Reverend  John  Garzia  contributed  the  church  silver,  and 
the  same  Edward  Moseley  contributed  a  library  of  seventy- 
four  volumes  to  the  church.  Like  many  of  the  Virginia 
churches,  it  fell  into  some  neglect  at  the  time  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, partly  because  of  the  disestablishment  of  the  church, 
and  partly  because  the  parishioners  were  too  far  from  the 


76  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

building  to  take  a  very  active  interest  in  it,  and  in  1819  it  was 
restored  as  we  learn  from  an  inscription  at  the  base  of  the 
chancel  window: 

In  honour  of  God,  to  the  memory  of 

Josiah  Collins 

by  whose  efforts  mainly  this  church 

when  in 

ruins  was  restored.     Died  May  19th,  1819 

St.  Michael's,  at  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  is  perhaps 
most  famous  of  all  the  Southern  churches,  although  it  is  by  no 
means  as  old  as  St.  Luke's  in  Smithfield,  nor  was  its  early 
history  as  interesting  as  that  of  the  Bruton  Church,  but  it 
has  been  fortunate  in  that  Charleston  has  from  its  foundation 
steadily  been  a  city  of  commercial  importance  as  well  as  a  stage 
of  famous  historical  events.  It  was  begun  in  1752,  the  South 
Carolina  Gazette  of  February  22nd  of  that  year  informing 
its  readers,  *'The  church  will  be  built  on  one  of  Mr.  Gibson's 
designs,  and  it  is  thought  will  exhibit  a  fine  piece  of  architect- 
ure when  completed."  It  is  elsewhere  recorded  that  the  plans 
were  brought  from  England,  and  as  there  is  no  record  of  any 
English  architect  of  that  day  named  Gibson,  and  as  James 
Gibbs  was  then  at  the  height  of  his  reputation,  the  late  Mont- 
gomery Schuyler  has  suggested  that  James  Gibbs  was  the  archi- 
tect, an  assumption  which  is  borne  out  by  the  design  of  the 


CHRIST    CHURCH,    ALEXANDRIA,    VA. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      77 

building  itself,  which,  with  reasonable  allowance  for  the  differ- 
ence in  materials,  resembles  quite  closely  some  of  the  Enghsh 
churches  designed  by  this  architect.  The  building  is  con- 
structed entirely  of  brick  covered  with  stucco,  and  is  indeed  a 
fine  piece  of  architecture  when  completed,  although  to  the  eye 
accustomed  to  the  lighter  and  slenderer  proportions  of  the 
New  England  churches  it  at  first'  sight  appears  a  trifle  heavy. 
At  the  time  of  its  construction  it  was  the'  finest  church  edifice 
in  the  United  States,  and  is  one  of  the  very  few  entirely  of 
masonry,  including  the  tower  as  far  as  the  belfry.  The  length 
of  the  building  with  the  portico  was  one  hundred  and  thirty 
feet,  and  its  width  sixty  feet,  while  the  tower  is  one  hundred 
and  sixty-eight  feet  high.  The  roof  is  of  slate,  and  the 
belfry  of  wood,  while  the  spire  and  the  gilt  ball  surmount- 
ing it  are  of  black  cypress  covered  with  copper.  Many  years 
ago,  during  a  severe  storm,  this  ball  was  blown  from  the 
steeple  and  made  a  dent  in  the  heavy  pavement  without 
injuring  the  ball  itself,  which  was  picked  up  and  restored  to 
its  original  position. 

As  was  the  case  with  many  of  the  Episcopal  churches  in 
America,  it  was  more  or  less  a  governmental  affair,  and,  like 
King's  Chapel  in  Boston,  the  cornerstone  was  laid  by  the 
Governor  of  the  state,  this  taking  place  on  February  18,  1752, 
three  years  after  the  New  England  church  was  begun.  The 
church  was  opened  for  services  on  February  16,  1761,  nine 
years  after  it  had  been  commenced,  part  of  the  delay  having 


78  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

been  caused  by  the  difficulty  in  selecting  a  satisfactory  rector. 
The  clock  and  chimes  were  bought  in  1764;  the  communion 
service  was  given  to  the  church  by  Governor  Bull  of  South 
Carolina,  and  the  organ  was  bought  by  subscription  in  1768. 
Like  almost  all  the  Colonial  churches,  this  one  suffered  vicis- 
situdes during  the  Revolutionary  War;  its  rector  was  a  Tory 
and  was  compelled  to  resign,  leaving  church  affairs  in  a  some- 
what chaotic  condition.  Materially,  it  suffered  through  the 
loss  of  its  leaden  roof,  which  was  melted  up  to  furnish  bullets 
for  the  Colonial  rifles.  Again,  during  the  Civil  War,  the 
building  suffered:  it  was  several  times  struck  by  shells  from 
the  Union  fleet,  and  the  bells  and  organ  having  been  removed 
to  Columbia  for  safekeeping,  the  bells  were  wantonly  broken 
up  by  Sherman's  army  on  its  march  to  the  sea.  After  the  war 
they  were  recast  by  the  English  firm  that  had  made  them  a 
hundred  years  before,  and,  with  the  organ,  were  restored  to 
their  original  position,  where  they  still  remain. 

The  church  has  suffered  not  only  during  two  wars,  but  a 
cyclone  in  1825  wrecked  the  spire  and  damaged  the  roof, 
and  on  August  31,  1886,  the  great  Charleston  earthquake 
cracked  the  walls  in  many  places,  sunk  the  spire  eight  inches, 
and  tilted  it  out  of  perpendicular,  and  $15,000  was  expended 
before  the  damage  was  repaired.  The  church  at  one  time 
caught  fire,  and  this  incident  was  made  the  subject  of  a  poem 
which  thirty  years  ago  used  to  be  a  favorite  in  school  speak- 
ing contests,  for  the  fire  was  extinguished  by  a  slave  at  great 


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EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES  79 

risk  to  his  own  life,  and  freedom  was  granted  to  him  as  a  re- 
ward for  his  daring. 

The  parish  was  founded  in  1751  by  a  division  of  the  first 
parish  of  St.  PhiHp's,  and  the  act  which  authorized  the  new 
parish  also  authorized  the  construction  of  the  new  church  at 
the  cost  of  not  more  than  £17,000  proclamation  money. 
Proclamation  money  was  paper  money  whose  value  had  been 
fixed  by  proclamation  at  about  £133  to  £100  sterUng,  but  the 
actual  cost  of  the  building  was  less  than  $40,000,  a  very  large 
sum  in  those  days,  and  measured  by  the  cost  of  labor  to-day 
an  infinitely  greater  one.  The  bill  for  the  entertainment  of 
the  Governor  and  his  staff  when  they  laid  the  cornerstone 
has  been  preserved;  the  dinner  cost  twenty  pounds,  toddy, 
punch,  beer,  and  wine  cost  forty-five  pounds  five  shilhngs,  and 
broken  glass  five  shillings  more.  The  traditional  hospitahty  of 
Charleston  seems  to  have  been  vindicated  even  at  that  early 
day.  The  beautiful  wrought-iron  gates  are  said  to  be  by 
A.  lusti,  who,  with  Diedrick  Werner,  a  German,  was  respon- 
sible for  most  of  the  most  artistic  ironwork  of  the  city.  The 
interior  of  the  building  is  extremely  well  designed,  with  magnifi- 
cent candelabra,  a  very  beautiful  pulpit,  and  an  agreeable 
reredos  and  galleries;  the  treatment  of  the  ceihng  is  some- 
what heavier  than  we  should  like  to  see  in  plaster,  and  extends 
over  the  full  width  of  the  church,  instead  of  being  supported 
over  the  galleries  as  was  the  custom  in  most  of  the  northern 
churches.      The  old-fashioned  pews  are  still  retained,  but 


80  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

platforms  have  been  built  in  most  of  them  (there  are  ninety- 
three  in  all)  so  that  the  congregation  might  be  enabled  to  see 
over  the  tops.  Of  the  exterior  nothing  need  be  said,  and 
taking  the  building  as  a  whole,  it  ranks  very  high  among  our 
American  church  structures,  not  only  of  Colonial  times,  but 
in  the  early  history  of  America. 

Christ  Church,  at  Alexandria,  Virginia,  and  Pohick  Church, 
not  far  from  Alexandria,  should  occupy  a  peculiar  place  in 
American  church  history,  since  with  their  history  is  associated 
that  of  very  great  men,  none  of  whose  lives  touched  those  of  the 
churches  more  closely  than  that  of  George  Washington;  a 
vestryman  of  both  of  them,  and  the  reputed  designer  of  Pohick. 
The  two  churches  resemble  each  other  very  closely,  except  that 
Christ  Church  has  a  tower  and  Pohick  has  none;  both  of  them 
stand  in  what  was  the  original  parish  of  Truro;  the  Pohick 
congregation  was  the  original  one  of  that  part  of  the  parish,  and 
was  the  church  of  the  Mount  Vernon  household. 

The  first  of  the  Washingtons  intimately  connected  with 
the  church  was  Augustine,  and  it  was  he  who  nominated  the 
first  lay  leader.  From  that  time  on  the  family  took  a  promi- 
nent part  in  the  affairs  of  the  church;  on  the  25th  of  October, 
1752,  George  Washington  and  George  William  Fairfax  were 
appointed  church  wardens  for  the  ensuing  year.  The  original 
church  structure  was  a  frame  one,  erected  before  1732;  but 
this  became  inadequate,  and  in  October,  1764,  Truro  parish 
was  divided  between  the  Pohick  Church  and  the  congregation 


THE    HOME    MORAVIAN    CHURCH,    WINSTON-SALEM,    N.    C. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      81 

now  known  as  Christ  Church,  Alexandria,  George  Washington 
becoming  a  vestryman  in  both  parishes.  One  question  which 
has  vexed  the  ecclesiastical  antiquaries  is  settled  by  the  ac- 
counts of  Pohick  Church,  and  this  is  as  to  whether  surplices 
were  or  were  not  worn  in  pre-Revolutionary  days;  the  accounts 
of  Pohick  Church  show  that  surpHces  were  bought  in  1756. 

Alexandria  was  at  that  day  quite  a  prosperous  little  town, 
and  in  1765,  after  the  division  of  the  parish,  it  was  determined 
to  build  a  new  church,  or  rather  two  churches,  one  at  Falls 
Church  and  the  other  at  Alexandria.  The  architect  selected 
was  one  James  Wren,  reputed  to  be  a  descendant  of  Sir  Chris- 
topher Wren,  and  the  contract  was  given  to  James  Parsons,  a 
builder,  for  the  sum  of  six  hundred  pounds  sterling.  The 
church  was  built  of  brick  and  roofed  with  juniper  shingles,  the 
order  used  in  the  decoration  of  the  pulpit  and  the  tables  for 
the  Commandments  and  the  Creed  being  Ionic,  from  which 
the  volutes  have  now  been  lost;  the  remainder  of  the  building 
is  supposed  to  have  been  designed  in  the  Tuscan  style.  The 
gallery  in  the  interior  was  added  about  1800,  and  the  spire 
somewhat  later,  and  the  original  appearance  of  the  church  was 
practically  that  of  the  Pohick  Church.  It  seems  that  even  in 
those  days  contractors  were  not  without  their  difficulties,  for 
the  building,  begun  long  before,  in  1772  was  not  completed, 
and  the  original  contractor  declined  to  proceed  with  the  work. 
Colonel  John  Carhsle  then  agreed  to  complete  the  work  for  the 
additional  amount  of  two  hundred  and  twenty  pounds,  and  the 


82  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

church  was  finished  and  dedicated  on  February  27,  1773. 
The  pews  were  then  sold  to  the  members  of  the  church,  George 
Washington  paying  thirty-six  pounds  ten  shiUings  for  his, 
which,  by  the  way,  remains  the  only  pew  in  the  church  in  its 
original  condition,  the  other  old  square  pews  having  been  cut 
up  into  the  present-day  or  "slip"  type. 

Pohick  Church  was  started  four  years  after  the  Alexandria 
Church  and  completed  at  about  the  same  date.  At  the  time 
of  the  erection  of  this  new  building  there  was  some  discussion 
as  to  whether  the  old  site  should  be  reoccupied,  or  whether 
a  new  site  should  be  chosen,  since  many  people  wished  to  pre- 
serve the  old  site,  especially  since  it  was  surrounded  by  a 
churchyard  in  which  the  dead  of  the  parish  had  been  for  long 
buried.  When  this  discussion  arose  Washington  at  once  took 
a  survey  of  the  parish  and  made  a  map,  marking  thereon  the 
residences  of  the  parishioners;  the  church  was  accordingly 
placed  at  the  centre  of  population.  The  construction  of  the 
new  church  was  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  building  committee 
of  five,  which  contains  four  very  distinguished  names :  George 
Washington,  George  Wilham  Fairfax,  Daniel  McCarty,  and 
Edward  Payne.  The  wily  Mr.  Washington  saved  the  archi- 
tect's commission  by  making  the  drawings  himself,  and  it  is 
reported  they  were  drawn  on  white  paper  with  India  ink; 
tracing  cloth  was,  of  course,  in  those  days  unknown.  This 
building,  although  somewhat  smaller  than  the  Alexandria 
Church,  was  of  very  similar  design,  and  it  is  probable  that 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      83 

Washington  as  a  vestryman  of  both  churches  had  access  to 
the  plans  of  Christ  Church,  and  copied  them  with  the  neces- 
sary reductions  in  size.  The  contractor  was  one  Daniel 
French,  whose  contract  was  for  the  amount  of  £887.  The 
specifications  were  known  as  "terms  of  agreement,'*  and 
the  contractor  was  then  known  as  the  "undertaker"  —  pos- 
sibly terms  of  disagreement  might  better  define  specifica- 
tions, although  the  contractor's  former  title  might  unhappily 
often  be  employed  to-day  with  truth.  From  the  time  of  com- 
pletion the  history  of  the  two  churches  was  sadly  unhke: 
Christ  Church  continued  to  grow  in  wealth  and  in  physical 
condition,  while  Pohick  Church  was  much  neglected,  and  in 
1837  was  in  a  very  bad  state  of  repair.  During  the  Civil  War 
"the  military  invaders  carried  off  at  their  pleasure  any  of  its 
interior  woodwork  for  private  purposes,  and  all  that  remained 
of  the  original  woodwork  at  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  was  the 
cornice  around  the  ceiling."  From  the  conclusion  of  the  Civil 
War  until  1874  no  services  were  held  there,  but  at  the  latter 
date  a  wealthy  New  Yorker  collected  sujQBcient  money  from 
New  York  and  Philadelphia  to  put  the  church  in  good  condi- 
tion, although  no  true  restoration  was  attempted.  Besides  the 
Revolutionary  worthies  who  attended  these  two  churches  were 
many  of  the  prominent  Southerners  who  figured  in  the  War  of 
the  Rebellion,  among  them  that  great  leader  whose  career, 
except  as  to  its  success,  was  so  singularly  like  that  of  Washing- 
ton: General  Robert  E.  Lee. 


84  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

These  two  churches,  Christ  Church  built  in  1765,  and 
Pohick  Church  in  1769,  were  the  two  with  which  President 
Washington  was  most  closely  associated,  but  if  the  records 
of  the  churches  erected  previous  to  the  American  Revolution, 
or  even  subsequent  to  his  death,  are  to  be  beheved,  he  was  a 
gentleman  who  never  missed  a  chance  to  attend  divine  service, 
and  unless  he  was  an  invited  guest  in  many  of  the  churches 
the  rents  of  the  pews  he  occupied  must  have  amounted  to  a 
staggering  figure.  It  is  rather  a  rare  thing  to  read  of  any  Colo- 
nial church  George  Washington  at  any  time  passed  without 
becoming  a  regular  attendant,  at  least  in  the  church  traditions, 
and  the  plates  indicating  the  pews  in  which  General  Washing- 
ton sat  would  be  almost  sufficient  to  have  run  a  well-equipped 
brass  foundry  for  a  number  of  years.  The  Congregational 
and  Unitarian  churches  of  Boston,  as  well  as  King's  Chapel, 
claim  him  for  an  attendant,  the  Dutch  Reformed  churches  in 
New  Jersey  likewise;  he  occupied  a  pew  in  St.  Paul's  Chapel 
and  also  one  in  Trinity  Church  in  New  York,  besides  Christ 
Church  in  Alexandria  and  the  Pohick  Meeting  House;  several 
other  Virginia  churches  have  records  of  his  attendance;  St. 
Peter's  and  Christ  Church  in  Philadelphia  number  him  among 
their  parishioners;  and  even  Presbyterian  Princeton  records 
him  as  having  been  an  attendant  at  the  college  chapel. 

His  was  a  record  of  church  attendance  which  has  probably 
never  been  surpassed,  and,  while  it  has  become  more  or  less 
a  joke  to  the  writer  to  find  how  regularly  George  Washington's 


THE    FIRST    REFORMED    CHURCH,    HACKENSACK,    N.    J. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  85 

name  occurs  in  the  records  of  every  early  parish,  there  is  after 
all  something  very  fine  in  the  religious  feeling  of  this  busy  man 
of  affairs  who  could  and  did  spare  time  to  attend  divine  wor- 
ship in  whatever  church  he  happened  to  be  near,  regardless  of 
its  sectarian  affiliations  or  its  humble  condition.  There  is 
something  very  fine,  too,  about  the  devotion  and  loyalty  of 
the  American  people  to  his  memory,  so  that  his  mere  passage 
through  an  old  building  has  somewhat  sanctified  and  con- 
secrated it,  and  is  forever  remembered  when  a  constant  attend- 
ance and  enormous  gifts  of  lesser  men  have  been  forgotten. 


CHAPTER  V 

CHURCHES    OF    THE    MIDDLE    STATES   DURING    THE    EIGH- 
TEENTH CENTURY 

THE  churches  of  the  Middle  States  illustrated  in  this 
chapter  can  be  divided  as  to  their  design  into  two 
classes :  those  built  in  New  Jersey  and  those  built  in 
New  York  and  Pennsylvania.     The  New  Jersey  churches  were 
distinctly  different  in  character  from  those  of  the  neighboring 
states,  probably  because  New  Jersey  was  at  that  time  a  rural 
community  without  urban  centres  like  New  York  and  Phila- 
delphia, where  wealth  and  education  brought  a  desire  for 
more  elegant  and  expensive  structures  than  could  be  expected 
in  the  farming  towns  of  the  smaller  state.     Probably,  too,  the 
racial  characteristics  of  the  settlers  in  New  Jersey  differen- 
tiated the  architecture  from  that  common  to  New  York  and 
Pennsylvania,  these  two  states  being  predominantly  EngHsh, 
while  in  New  Jersey  the  older  communities  at  least  were 
chiefly  Dutch.     There  is  another  point  to  be  considered  in  dis- 
cussing this  difference:   only  the  finest  of  the  old  buildings  in 
New  York  and  Philadelphia  have  been  preserved,  and  there  were 
several  old  buildings  in  those  cities  which  were  not  at  all  dis- 
similar from  such  New  Jersey  churches  as  the  First  Reformed 
Church  at  Hackensack  and  the  First  Presbyterian  Church  at 

86 


CHRIST    CHURCH,    PHILADELPHIA,    PA. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      87 

Newark,  but  they  have  been  long  since  pulled  down  and  de- 
stroyed. 

The  settlers  in  the  Middle  States  did  not  take  their  religion 
as  hard  as  the  New  Englanders  or  Virginians  did,  and  the 
history  of  all  the  churches  is  therefore  comparatively  free 
from  records  of  persecution.  Pennsylvania  was,  of  course, 
settled  by  the  Quaker  colony  under  William  Penn,  and  while 
the  Quakers  seem  to  have  been  extremely  obstreperous  and 
nuisancy  when  they  were  the  under  dogs,  they  were  kind- 
hearted  and  good-natured  when  they  held  the  upper  hand, 
so  there  seems  to  have  been  no  objection  raised  to  the  founda- 
tion of  Episcopal  parishes  in  Philadelphia,  nor  to  the  erection 
of  Lutheran  churches  in  adjoining  settlements.  In  New 
Jersey,  or  at  least  within  the  hmits  of  the  old  colony  of  East 
Jersey,  the  Dutch  settlers  had  settled  and  founded  their 
churches  before  the  Enghsh  came  into  control,  and  w^ere  never 
disturbed  by  the  English  government  in  the  peaceful  conduct 
of  their  religious  affairs.  The  same  thing  was  true  of  the 
upper  part  of  New  York  State;  and  New  York  City,  even 
during  the  eighteenth  century,  was  the  most  cosmopohtan 
and  tolerant  of  all  the  American  cities,  and,  except  in  its  very 
early  days,  all  the  sects  worked  together  with  a  spirit  of  Chris- 
tian fellowship  unusual  before  the  nineteenth  century.  In 
fact,  in  most  communities  from  which  the  New  England  Puri- 
tan element  was  absent  there  seems  to  have  been  little  dis- 
cord.    In  the  early  days  New  England  was  more  cordially 


88  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

disliked  by  the  Middle  States  than  even  old  England;  and 
after  the  Revolution  the  inhabitants  of  the  Middle  States 
felt  that  they  had  borne  the  principal  burdens  of  a  war  begun 
in  New  England,  which  chiefly  advantaged  New  England, 
although  after  the  first  year  practically  none  of  the  fighting 
was  done  in  New  England,  and  the  proportion  of  troops  fur- 
nished by  it  was  disproportionately  small  in  comparison  with 
its  population.  But  as  Mr.  Harold  Frederick  has  said  in  one  of 
his  books,  it  was  New  England  that  furnished  the  historians 
who  wrote  of  the  war,  so  the  skirmishes  at  Lexington  and 
Concord  have  been  made  more  familiar  to  us  than  the  Battle 
of  Saratoga,  which  the  English  historian.  Creasy,  has  given  as 
one  of  the  world's  fifteen  decisive  battles. 

The  oldest  existing  church  buildings  in  the  Middle  States 
are  undoubtedly  those  of  the  Dutch  Reformed  Church  in  Ber- 
gen and  Monmouth  counties.  New  Jersey,  excepting,  possibly, 
some  of  the  Quaker  meeting  houses.  None  of  these  has  been 
illustrated,  since  they  possess  nothing  distinctly  ecclesiastical 
in  their  architecture,  resembling  rather  large  barns  or  cot- 
tages, and  since  the  Quaker  policy  was  one  of  abstention  from 
pohtical  and  military  affairs,  few  men  of  historical  importance 
were  members  of  the  different  meetings.  Probably  the  oldest 
remaining  church  building  in  the  Middle  States  is,  nevertheless, 
the  Quaker  Meeting  House  at  Flushing,  Long  Island,  said  to 
have  been  built  in  1665,  and  certainly  dating  from  the  seven- 
teenth century.     One  or  two  other  meeting  houses  in  southern 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      89 

New  Jersey,  and  one  or  two  near  Philadelphia,  also  date  from 
the  end  of  the  seventeenth  or  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  but  aside  from  their  age  have  no  reason  to  be  in- 
cluded in  this  compilation. 

St.  David's  Church,  at  Radnor,  Pennsylvania,  is  in  design 
typical  of  this  earher  work.  Built  in  1715,  of  stone,  it  differs 
in  no  important  detail  of  the  exterior  from  the  small  stone 
farmhouses  which  once  existed  in  such  profusion  around 
Philadelphia,  and  though  it  is  a  quaint  and  interesting  httle 
structure,  it  has  so  little  of  the  ecclesiastical  character  as  to 
make  it  hardly  worth  illustrating. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  earhest  of  the  Dutch  Reformed 
churches:  that  at  Oakland  built  before  1700,  its  neighbor 
at  Wyckoff  built  in  the  early  eighteenth  century,  and  others 
at  Bergen  Field,  Ridgefield,  Hohokus,  and  other  places,  are  of 
so  uniform  and  uninteresting  a  character  that  the  best  of  them, 
the  Hackensack  Church,  will  serve  to  illustrate  them  all. 
Most  of  them  were  built  of  local  red  sandstone,  and  they  were 
plain,  gabled  structures  with  a  stone  tower  at  one  end  sur- 
mounted with  an  octagonal  spire,  or  perhaps  a  lantern,  and 
for  some  unexplained  reason  they  lack  entirely  the  grace  and 
charm  of  the  Dutch  country  houses.  They  have  one  char- 
acteristic, however,  which  is  surprising  when  one  considers  the 
fact  that  they  were  all  of  them  built  toward  the  end  of  the 
Renaissance  period,  the  traditional  pointed  Gothic  windows 
were  generally  used  with  brick  coigns  around  the  windows 


90      EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

and  sometimes  with  brick  tracery,  although  the  decorative 
features  of  the  churches  were  of  a  simple,  Classic  type,  and 
not  very  well-designed  Classic  at  that. 

The  congregation  of  the  Hackensack  Church  was  organized 
as  early  as  1686,  and  the  first  building  erected  on  the  present 
site  was  constructed  in  1696;  it  was  a  substantial  stone  struc- 
ture, and  when  it  was  rebuilt,  in  1726,  some  of  the  stone  from 
the  old  building  was  incorporated  into  the  new.  Since  1726 
the  building  has  been  enlarged  or  altered  three  times,  in  1791, 
1837,  and  1867,  but  care  was  taken  each  time  not  to  deviate  from 
the  original  scheme,  and  there  has  been  no  substantial  change 
in  the  style  of  the  structure  since  its  erection.  In  the  interior 
there  have  been  inevitably  some  changes;  it  is  quite  probable 
that  the  gallery  was  not  part  of  the  original  scheme,  and  the 
iron  columns  were  only  inserted  in  1867,  taking  the  place  of 
older  wooden  columns;  the  ceiHng  has  probably  always  been 
of  the  rather  curious  form  shown  in  the  illustration,  but  this 
is  not  certain;  the  pews,  of  course,  were  originally  square  pews. 
This  church  at  Hackensack  unquestionably  had  great  in- 
fluence on  the  design  of  ecclesiastical  structures  in  its  neigh- 
borhood, since  it  calls  itself  the  "Mother"  of  sixteen  other 
churches,  fifteen  of  w^hich,  constructed  before  1814,  resemble 
in  the  main  the  parent  church.  Unfortunately  the  name  of 
the  designer  is  not  known,  and  probably  it  had  no  designer 
in  the  real  sense  of  the  word,  but  was  built  from  simple  draw- 
ings made  by  the  masons  and  carpenters  who  constructed  it, 


ST.    PAUL  S    CHAPEL,    NEW    YORK    CITY 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      91 

and  of  a  size  indicated  by  its  congregation  as  necessary.  This 
was  a  usual  method  of  procedure  throughout  the  colonies  for 
domestic  as  well  as  for  ecclesiastical  structures. 

Christ  Church  in  Philadelphia,  w^hich  was  erected  only  a  year 
after  the  Hackensack  Church,  is  a  very  different  sort  of  build- 
ing; it  is  one  of  the  handsomest  of  all  the  Colonial  buildings, 
and  perhaps  the  most  interesting  of  them  all  architecturally, 
notable  as  one  of  the  few  in  which  the  body  of  the  building 
was  not  neglected  by  the  designer  in  favor  of  the  tower  and 
the  interior.  The  designer  is  said  to  have  been  Dr.  John 
Kearsley,  an  amateur  architect,  although  a  physician  by  pro- 
fession. He  was  certainly  the  designer  of  St.  Bartholomew's 
and  St.  John's  churches  in  Philadelphia,  and  has  sometimes 
said  to  have  been  the  architect  of  Independence  Hall,  al- 
though it  is  probable  that  Andrew  Hamilton  was  its  architect, 
working  under  a  committee  on  which  Dr.  Kearsley  served. 
The  building  was  begun  in  1727,  and  was  completed  in  1737, 
and  the  design  in  a  general  way  resembles  that  of  St.  Martin's- 
in-the-Fields,  London,  although  the  difference  in  the  material 
has  changed  its  apparent  character  from  that  of  the  Enghsh 
church.  In  1754  a  chime  of  bells  was  purchased  in  England, 
the  money  having  been  raised  for  this  purpose  through  a  lot- 
tery run  by  Benjamin  Franklin,  and  as  there  was  only  one  other 
set  of  chimes  in  the  colonies  at  the  time  that  these  were  erected, 
the  interest  of  the  citizens  of  Philadelphia  in  them  was  very 
great,  and  they  were  rung  daily  at  noon  and  in  the  evenings 


92  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

of  market  days  to  please  the  Philadelphians.  Christ  Church, 
although  a  good  Church  of  England  body,  was  of  an  extremely 
independent  spirit,  and  after  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
had  been  signed,  the  bust  of  George  III  was  removed  from  the 
church,  and  when  the  crown  on  the  spire  of  the  church  was 
destroyed  by  hghtning  a  few  months  later,  it  was  considered 
of  good  import  by  the  congregation.  On  July  20th,  in  1775, 
the  Continental  Congress  attended  in  a  body  its  services,  and 
during  the  years  of  the  presidency  of  General  Washington 
he  was  a  pewholder  in  this  church,  although  his  pew  is  no 
longer  in  the  building,  but  is  preserved  in  the  National  Mu- 
seum at  Washington.  Betsy  Ross  was  another  well-known 
parishioner.  Like  many  of  the  old  Episcopal  churches,  its 
furniture,  silver,  etc.,  possesses  much  historical  interest,  and 
perhaps  the  most  valuable  of  all  its  possessions  is  an  original 
copy  of  the  prayer-book  of  Edward  VI  with  notations  of 
the  changes  made  when  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of 
the  United  States  was  organized  from  the  old  Church  of  Eng- 
land; the  convention  which  affected  this  organization  was 
held  in  this  building  in  1785.  The  exterior  of  the  building 
almost  perfectly  expresses  its  interior;  the  existence  of  galleries 
being  amply  indicated  by  the  superimposed  order  of  the  ex- 
terior, and  the  nave  and  side  aisles  are  equally  well  expressed 
in  the  treatment  of  the  fagade  here  illustrated.  While  the 
interior  remains  much  the  same  as  it  was  when  constructed, 
the  building  has  been  extended  two  or  three  times,  and  the 


ST.    PETER  S    CHURCH,    PHILADELPHIA,    PA. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      93 

half  arch  which  terminates  the  arcade  supporting  the  roof 
was  necessitated  at  the  time  of  the  last  of  these  extensions, 
since  there  was  not  room  enough  on  the  lot  for  another  full 
bay,  and  the  vestry  desired  a  passage  from  the  north  to  the 
south  side  of  the  church  at  its  rear.  A  curious  feature  of  the 
interior  is  the  way  that  the  galleries  pass  completely  behind 
the  pillars,  apparently  not  being  supported  by  them  at  all; 
this  change,  Mr.  Brinton  White  says,  was  made  in  1834  on  the 
recommendation  of  Mr.  Thomas  M.  Walter,  an  architect  of 
reputation.  These  two  details  of  the  interior  are  things  which 
would  not  probably  be  done  were  the  building  to  be  designed 
nowadays,  yet  the  structure  is  of  an  excellence  not  surpassed 
by  any  of  the  modern  Classical  churches,  and  by  few  even  of 
the  famous  English  ones. 

St.  George's  Church,  at  Schenectady,  is  one  of  the  old  New 
York  churches  which  possesses  a  certain  amount  of  historic 
interest,  but  which  has  been  so  fully  and  unhappily  "re- 
stored" as  to  destroy  its  value  architecturally.  Founded  as 
a  mission  to  the  Six  Nations  under  Queen  Anne,  it  gradually 
became  a  regular  parish,  the  present  building  having  been 
constructed  in  1748,  and  was  the  parochial  church  of  Sir  Wil- 
liam Johnson,  the  famous  intendant  of  Indian  affairs. 

The  Mohawk  Valley  is  the  site  of  another  old  church  which 
deserves  a  passing  mention:  the  old  Palatine  Church,  built  in 
1770.  The  Palatine  settlers  in  the  valley  were  during  the 
Revolutionary  War  most  determined  opponents  of  the  Tory 


94  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

sons  of  Sir  William  Johnson,  and  it  was  against  them  that  the 
terrible  forays  led  by  the  Johnsons  and  Walter  Butler  were 
directed.  One  of  its  parishioners  was  the  Continental  General 
Herkimer,  killed  at  Oriskany;  and  the  church  building  itself 
was  injured  by  marauding  parties.  It  differs  from  all  the 
other  early  churches  in  having  a  gambrel,  or  "Dutch"  roof, 
but  is  of  small  size  and  little  architectural  interest. 

The  Tennent  Church  is  the  oldest  Presbyterian  church  in 
the  United  States;  the  congregation  was  formed  by  Scotch 
Covenanters  in  1692,  who  built  a  rude  meeting  house  about 
five  miles  north  of  the  present  site;  this  served  until  1731, 
when  the  present  building  was  erected.  Its  corporate  title  is 
"The  First  Presbyterian  Church  of  the  County  of  Mon- 
mouth," but  during  its  early  history  it  was  known  as  "The 
Scots  Church,"  later  taking  its  name  from  its  most  famous 
pastor,  the  Reverend  WilHam  Tennent,  an  Irish  immigrant 
to  America  in  1730.  In  1751  the  church  was  enlarged  and 
repaired,  although  both  the  plan  and  exterior  remain  substan- 
tially in  accordance  with  the  original  scheme,  and  although 
the  building  is  of  wood  painted  white,  it  is  to-day  in  excellent 
condition  with  no  changes  of  importance  from  the  traditional 
form.  Historically,  its  chief  claim  to  fame  is  the  fact  that  it 
was  used  as  headquarters  by  General  Washington  at  the 
Battle  of  Monmouth,  and  in  the  great  graveyard  which  sur- 
rounds it  are  buried  many  soldiers  of  both  armies,  including 
the  Enghsh  Colonel  Monckton.     Although  it  has  no  archi- 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      95 

tectural  pretensions,  it  is  not  without  a  certain  quaint  attrac- 
tiveness, due  perhaps  as  much  to  its  happy  situation  among 
great  trees,  and  to  its  color,  the  traditional  white  and  green 
of  Colonial  architecture,  as  to  any  particular  feature  of  its  de- 
sign. It  is  the  oldest  of  many  similar  structures  built  by  the 
poorer  congregations  around  New  York,  and  its  inclusion 
has  been  thought  fitting  for  this  reason,  as  well  as  because  it  is 
the  earliest  existing  Presbyterian  church. 

The  old  prints  and  drawings  of  the  city  of  New  York  show 
a  multitude  of  churches,  some  of  which,  judging  from  these 
rather  crudely  executed  works,  must  have  been  of  great  in- 
terest, although  probably  none  of  them  were  better  designed 
than  St.  Paul's,  the  oldest  chapel  of  Trinity  Church;  this 
was  the  only  church  chartered  in  the  city  of  New  York,  and 
all  the  older  Episcopal  congregations  in  the  city  are  either 
still  chapels  of  Trinity  Church,  or  had  their  beginnings  as 
chapels.  The  first  structure  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  in  New  York  was  a  small  chapel  within  the  fort 
erected  by  the  Enghsh  when  they  took  possession  of  Man- 
hattan Island,  and  was  called  King's  Chapel.  The  first 
building  of  Trinity  parish  was  completed  in  1697,  enlarged 
in  1737,  and  burned  in  1776.  In  1778  a  new  church  of  less 
size  was  constructed,  and  the  present  Trinity  Church  was 
built  in  1841.  This  is,  of  course,  the  well-known  Gothic  build- 
ing designed  by  Upjohn,  which  is  excluded  from  illustration 
because  of  its  style  and  the  late  date  of  its  erection. 


96  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

St.  Paul's  Chapel  is,  however,  the  original  structure,  of 
which  the  cornerstone  was  laid  in  1756;  it  is  said  to  have 
been  designed  by  a  Scotch  architect  named  Macbean,  although 
there  is  a  tradition  to  the  effect  that  its  tower  and  the  portico, 
perhaps  its  best  features,  are  the  work  of  an  unknown  French 
draughtsman.  While  this  story  may  have  some  truth,  it 
hardly  seems  probable,  since  the  proportions  of  both  the  spire 
and  the  portico  are  much  more  slender  than  the  French  work 
of  the  period  of  Louis  XV,  and  are  austere  rather  than  florid. 
They  are  also  so  completely  in  harmony,  both  with  the  body 
of  the  exterior  and  with  the  exquisite  interior,  that  there  seems 
little  doubt  that  they  were  designed  at  the  same  time,  although 
perhaps  not  executed  until  later.  Historically,  the  building  is 
second  only  to  Trinity  Church  in  importance;  its  portico  con- 
tains a  memorial  to  General  Montgomery,  a  former  parish- 
ioner, who  was  killed  at  the  siege  of  Quebec,  and  whose  body 
was,  by  permission  of  the  British  authorities,  disinterred  from 
its  Canadian  grave  and  reinterred  in  St.  Paul's  Chapel.  The 
monument  itself  had  a  disturbed  time  in  getting  to  the  United 
States;  it  was  made  in  France  at  the  order  of  the  ubiquitous 
Benjamin  Frankhn,  was  brought  over  in  an  American  priva- 
teer, captured  by  an  English  gunboat,  and  eventually  reached 
its  destination. 

During  the  days  of  the  British  occupancy  of  New  York  this 
was  the  church  of  the  British  oflScers,  and  Lord  Howe,  Major 
Andre,  and  Sir  Guy  Carleton   worshipped   here,  and    pews 


^ 


'HOLY    TRINITY,       LANCASTER,    PA. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES      97 

occupied  by  General  Washington  and  General  Clinton  are 
still  preserved,  and  indicated  by  tablets  set  in  the  adjacent 
walls.  General  Washington,  that  inveterate  churchgoer,  at- 
tended the  ceremonial  services  here  on  the  day  of  his  in- 
auguration. An  excellent  old  organ  which  was  played  at  the 
ceremonial  service  was  afterward  sold  to  St.  Michael's  at 
Marblehead,  and  the  present  one  was  installed. 

St.  Peter's  Church,  Philadelphia,  occupied  a  similar  rela- 
tionship to  Christ  Church  that  St.  Paul's  did  to  Trinity 
Church  in  New  York.  It  was  originally  a  chapel  of  Christ 
Church,  but  in  1832  became  an  independent  congregation. 
It  was  erected  on  land  given  by  two  sons  of  William  Penn,  who 
were  members  of  the  Church  of  England,  although  their  father 
was  so  distinguished  a  Quaker.  Its  construction  was  made 
necessary  by  the  overcrowding  of  Christ  Church,  and  in  1758 
the  vestry  records  show  that,  "It  is  unanimously  agreed  that 
the  taking  and  collecting  the  subscriptions  and  conducting 
the  affairs  relating  to  the  building  and  furnishing  the  said  in- 
tended church  shall  be  under  the  management  of  the  minister, 
church  wardens,  and  vestry  of  Christ  Church."  The  name  of 
the  architect  is  not  certainly  known,  but  he  was  probably  one 
Samuel  Rhodes.  Its  construction  occupied  the  three  years 
from  1758  to  1761;  the  tower  and  spire  were  not  part  of  the 
original  design,  and  were  only  added  in  1842  from  drawings 
made  by  Mr.  William  Strickland,  a  distinguished  architect  of 
the  early  nineteenth  century.     Before  the  construction  of  the 


98       EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

present  spire,  the  lower  part  of  the  tower  was  topped  with  a 
cupola  containing  two  small  bells,  but  when  a  full  chime  was 
presented  to  the  church,  the  congregation  desired  some  place 
to  put  them,  and  finding  that  an  extension  of  the  tower  was 
necessary,  it  determined  that  it  should  be  in  the  form  of  a 
spire.  The  building  is  sixty  by  ninety  feet,  unusually  large  for 
a  church  of  that  day,  and  has  a  curious  and  unexpected  plan, 
the  pulpit  being  placed  at  one  end  of  the  building  backing  up 
against  the  tower,  while  the  reredos  is  at  the  opposite  end  in  front 
of  the  triple  window  shown  in  the  photograph  of  the  exterior. 
It  has  no  principal  entrance,  but  at  each  corner  two  small  doors 
on  the  adjoining  sides  lead  to  a  vestibule,  through  which  one 
reaches  the  body  of  the  church.  The  building  is  by  no  means 
so  pretentious  as  Christ  Church,  but  possesses  very  strongly 
the  most  charming  features  of  the  Colonial  work  in  the  de- 
Hghtful  proportions  of  the  window  openings  and  the  placing 
of  the  white  notes  against  the  red  brick  of  the  body  of  the 
building. 

Holy  Trinity,  at  Lancaster,  Pennsylvania,  is  one  of  the  oldest 
and  most  beautiful  of  the  Lutheran  churches,  and  shows  very 
distinctly  the  influence  of  the  Philadelphia  churches.  The 
first  settlement  by  Lutherans,  in  what  is  known  as  Lancaster 
County,  was  made  in  about  1710,  and  in  1729  this  congrega- 
tion was  organized,  the  first  church  building,  erected  in  1734, 
being  a  small  stone  structure  with  a  steeple  and  bells.  The 
congregation  was  German,  but  the  church  organization  (as  was 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  99 

the  case  in  the  early  days)  was  dependent  more  or  less  upon 
Sweden,  since  Sweden  was  the  only  country  in  which  the  State 
Church  was  the  Evangelical  Lutheran.  The  old  building  be- 
coming too  small  for  the  congregation,  on  May  18,  1761,  the 
cornerstone  of  the  present  church  was  laid,  and  although 
the  names  of  the  vestry  and  the  deacons  and  the  pastor  and  the 
provost  were  enclosed  in  the  cornerstone,  the  name  of  the 
architect  was  not,  and  the  official  church  history  is  silent  about 
him.  In  1766  the  church  was  consecrated,  and  in  1768  a  bell 
was  cast  in  London  that  still  hangs  in  the  steeple.  The  organ, 
which  at  the  time  of  the  Revolutionary  War  was  the  largest  in 
America,  was  built  in  1771,  and  in  1777,  when  Congress  was 
expelled  from  Philadelphia  and  took  refuge  in  Lancaster,  some 
of  its  members  worshipped  in  the  church.  The  tower  was 
built  in  1785-86,  and  in  1787  Frankhn  College  was  incorpo- 
rated, and  the  cornerstone  laid,  Benjamin  Franklin  being 
among  those  present.  The  first  president  of  this  college  was 
Dr.  H.  E.  Muhlenberg,  celebrated  as  a  naturalist,  who  was  at 
that  time  pastor  of  Trinity  Church.  Since  Lancaster  was 
until  1812  the  capital  of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania,  a  number  o£ 
distinguished  worthies  of  Colonial  days  were  worshippers  at 
Trinity,  and  Thomas  Wharton,  president  of  the  Supreme 
Executive  Council,  was  buried  in  the  church  grounds  in  1778, 
and  Thomas  Miflflin,  the  first  Governor  of  the  state,  was  buried 
there  in  1800.  The  church  history  has  been  uneventful  and 
prosperous  for  the  two  centuries  which  have  elapsed  since  the 


100  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

first  settlers  gathered.  The  church  building  has  been  repaired 
and  repainted  from  time  to  time,  but  the  records  show  no 
evidence  of  extensive  alteration  other  than  the  construction 
of  the  tower  as  previously  noted. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  small  churches  still  in  existence 
in  the  United  States  is  St.  Paul's  at  East  Chester,  near  Mount 
Vernon,  New  York.  The  first  church  building  at  this  town 
was  erected  in  1692,  and  the  permission  of  the  Governor  of  the 
province  was  asked  for  the  installation  of  a  rector.  It  was 
refused,  and  the  congregation  appealed  to  the  Assembly  for 
permission  to  separate  from  the  parish,  of  which  till  then  they 
had  formed  a  part.  This  was  granted,  but  by  order  of  the 
Bishop  of  London,  confirmed  by  Queen  Anne,  it  was  rescinded, 
and  the  church  was  continued  as  a  chapel  until  1795.  The  pres- 
ent building  was  begun  in  1764,  and  completed  in  1776;  and 
the  storms  of  war  at  once  broke  over  the  new  building.  It  was 
used  as  a  hospital  by  the  British,  who  destroyed  part  of  it.  Its 
congregation  was  much  scattered,  and  it  was  years  after  the 
war  before  it  again  became  a  strong  organization. 

The  First  Presbyterian  Church  in  Newark  is  the  oldest 
Presbyterian  congregation  in  the  state,  the  members  of  the 
congregation  being  New  Englanders  from  Branford,  Connec- 
ticut, who  had  become  unwelcome  in  their  native  town  be- 
cause of  their  Presbyterian  leanings.  The  first  minister  was 
Abram  Pierson,  a  Scotchman,  and  the  first  of  three  succes- 
sive church  edifices  for  this  congregation  was  constructed  in 


MEETING    HOUSE,    SPRINGFIELD,    N.    J. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  101 

1663-65.  The  original  building  was  a  stockaded  fort  prepared 
for  defence  against  Indian  attacks,  and  lasted  until  1715,  when 
a  substantial  stone  structure  was  erected;  this  was  occupied 
until  the  present  building  was  constructed  in  1787.  As  is  not 
unusual  in  early  American  churches,  there  seems  to  be  consider- 
able doubt  as  to  the  exact  date  of  the  structure,  *'The  Geor- 
gian Period"  giving  it  as  1774,  and  other  documents  as  1746, 
or  1791.  The  church  history  has  been  quiet  and  uneventful, 
but  it  has  the  distinction  of  having  given  the  first  president 
to  Yale  University,  the  Reverend  Abram  Pierson,  Jr.;  its 
second  pastor,  and  its  seventh  pastor,  Aaron  Burr,  was  the 
president  of  Princeton  University,  or,  as  it  was  then  called, 
the  College  of  New  Jersey.  The  College  of  New  Jersey  was 
in  fact  organized  within  the  walls  of  the  second  structure  built 
for  this  congregation,  by  members  of  the  Presbyterian  Synod 
of  New  Jersey  who  desired  a  place  of  higher  education  with 
suitable  religious  influence,  and  Princeton  was  for  many  years 
rather  strongly  Presbyterian  in  its  government  and  student 
body,  although  it  has  never  discriminated  either  for  or  against 
any  particular  creed.  The  oflScial  church  history  has  nothing 
to  say  of  its  architect. 

Very  similar  to  the  Newark  church  is  the  Presbyterian 
Church  at  Elizabeth,  New  Jersey,  built  in  1789,  of  similar 
stone,  with  brick  coigns  around  the  openings,  and  a  tall,  slim 
wooden  spire. 

Another  Presbyterian  Church  illustrated  in  this  chapter 


102  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

is  that  in  Springfield,  New  Jersey,  situated  not  very  far  from 
the  Newark  church,  but  constructed  of  wood,  of  simple  design, 
and  resembling  more  nearly  the  Tennent  Church  than  that 
at  Newark.  It  is  probably  as  nearly  typical  of  the  country 
meeting  houses  of  late  Colonial  times  as  any  building  could  be, 
and  aside  from  the  belfry  there  is  nothing  to  distinguish  it 
from  a  big  storehouse  or  dwelling  house  of  the  period.  But 
like  many  of  the  Colonial  buildings,  in  spite  of  its  extreme 
simplicity  it  is  possessed  of  considerable  charm,  because  of 
the  excellent  proportions  of  the  cornice  to  the  mass  which  it 
surmounts,  the  pleasing  texture  of  the  surfaces,  and  the  feeling 
of  scale  due  to  the  distribution  and  division  of  the  window 
openings.  The  original  church  at  Springfield  was  built  in 
1761,  and  was  burned  on  June  20,  1780,  during  the  battle  of 
Springfield.  It  had  been  previously  used  by  the  Colonial 
government  as  a  storehouse  for  supplies  for  the  Continental 
army,  necessitating  the  utilization  of  a  neighboring  bam  for 
services;  the  present  structure  was  rebuilt  on  the  old  founda- 
tion, and  was  opened  for  worship  on  November  20,  1791. 
The  exterior  is  of  hand-split  shingles,  and  as  was  the  case  with 
all  buildings  of  that  period,  the  ironwork,  even  to  the  nails, 
was  hand-made.  The  interior  was  done  over  about  1880, 
when  the  small  iron  columns  supporting  the  balcony  were 
substituted  for  the  older  ones,  and  the  stencil  patterns  were 
appHed  to  the  walls.  The  statue  in  front  of  the  church  rep- 
resents a  Continental  soldier,  and   was  erected   in  memory 


ST.    MARK  S    CHURCH,    NEW    YORK.    CITY 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  103 

of  the  skirmish  fought  there,  during  which  the  church  was 
held  by  Continental  troops  and  attacked  by  the  British,  while 
the  Reverend  Mr.  Caldwell,  the  pastor  of  the  church,  although 
not  actively  engaged  in  the  fight,  tore  up  the  Watts  hymn 
books  for  wadding,  and  threw  them  to  the  soldiers,  crying  out, 
"Give  them  Watts,  boys;  put  Watts  into  them." 

The  latest  of  the  churches  in  this  chapter  is  St.  Mark's-in- 
the-Bouwerie,  New  York  City.  Again  the  church  records 
are  silent  as  to  the  architect,  although  the  contract  for  the 
carpenter  work  was  made  with  one  C.  Halstead,  and  that 
for  mason  work  with  Messrs.  Pers  &  McComb.  There  is  just  a 
bare  possibility  that  this  McComb  was  the  architect-builder 
who  was  the  reputed  designer  of  the  City  Hall  and  St.  John's 
Chapel,  but  this  is  only  a  guess.  The  present  building  was 
begun  in  1795  and  completed  about  1799,  but  while  the  body 
of  the  building  remains  as  it  was  then,  the  appearance  was 
very  different,  since  neither  the  tower  nor  the  porch  was 
part  of  the  original  scheme,  and  it  is  these  two  things  which 
give  the  character  to  the  structure.  On  December  7,  1826, 
the  plans  of  Messrs.  Thomson  &  Town  for  a  steeple  were  ac- 
cepted. Town  being  probably  Ithiel  Town,  who  was  the  ar- 
chitect also  of  the  Centre  Church  at  New  Haven,  and  was 
the  most  distinguished  architect  of  his  time.  The  present 
porch  across  the  front  of  the  building  was  added  in  1836. 

The  original  interior  had  large  square  columns  in  place  of 
the  curious  iron  ones  now  in  the  building,  and  as  the  congre- 


104  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

gation  objected  to  these,  because  they  obstructed  the  view  of 
the  altar,  they  were  removed  and  the  present  ones  inserted; 
otherwise  the  interior  remains  about  as  it  was  at  the  beginning. 
The  ground  on  which  the  church  stands  was  originally 
part  of  the  country  estate  of  Peter  Stuyvesant,  who  built 
a  small  chapel  on  it  for  the  accommodation  of  his  own  house- 
hold and  the  settlement  which  grew  around  it,  known  as  the 
Bouwerie.  After  his  death  in  1682  he  was  buried  in  a  vault 
below  the  chapel.  His  widow,  who  died  in  1686,  left  the  chapel 
to  the  Dutch  Reformed  Church  of  New  York  to  dispose  of 
as  it  saw  fit,  provided  the  vault  was  retained.  The  Stuy- 
vesant family  later  joined  the  English  Church,  and  Petrus  Stuy- 
vesant, Peter's  great-grandson,  and  a  vestryman  of  Trinity  for 
some  years,  proposed  to  the  vestry  of  Trinity  Church  the 
erection  of  a  building  upon  his  land,  toward  which  he  offered 
to  give  £800  and  a  plot  of  ground  150  x  190  ft.  The  vestry  of 
Trinity  appropriated  the  sum  of  £5,000  in  addition,  and  fur- 
ther sums  were  raised  by  selHng  five-year  leases  of  the  pews  at 
auction,  pew  No.  9  being  presented  to  Mr.  Stuyvesant  rent 
free  for  five  years  in  recognition  of  his  liberality;  pew  No.  108 
was  reserved  for  "the  Governor  and  other  respectable  char- 
acters who  may  occasionally  attend  divine  service  in  the 
church."  Among  the  other  pewholders  were  Lieutenant 
Colonel  Nicholas  Fish,  General  Horatio  Gates,  Francis  Bayard 
Winthrop,  and  John  Slidell,  and  besides  these  men  the  roster 
of  the  congregation  has  included  at  least  one  representative  of 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  105 

probably  all  the  most  distinguished  old  families  of  New  York. 
After  the  church  was  completed  it  was  transferred  by  Trinity 
parish  to  a  separate  church  organization,  this  being  the  first 
independent  Episcopal  Church  in  New  York.  In  spite  of  the 
fact  that  a  very  great  many  wealthy  and  distinguished  people 
have  been  members  of  the  congregation,  the  church  organiza- 
tion has  never  been  extremely  prosperous;  the  location  of  the 
church  has  long  been  far  from  the  centre  of  the  residential 
district,  and  its  existence  to-day  is  due  to  the  affection  with 
which  the  congregation  regard  the  place  of  burial  of  so  many 
of  their  distinguished  ancestors.  The  memorials  in  the  church 
record  the  names  of  some  of  these,  of  whom  certainly  the  most 
distinguished  is,  as  we  learn  from  the  tablet  erected  to  his 
memory: 

PETRUS  STUYVESANT 

late  Captain-General  and  Governor-in-Chief  of  Amsterdam 

in  New  Netherland,  now  called  New  York, 
and  the  Dutch  West  India  Islands,  died  in  A.  D.  1681/2 

aged  80  years. 


CHAPTER  VI 

CONNECTICUT   CHURCHES   OF  THE   NINETEENTH 
CENTURY 

WE  have,  of  course,  from  the  nineteenth  century  a 
very  great  multitude  of  church  buildings,  and  in  the 
selection  of  examples  for  illustration  we  are  troubled, 
not  with  the  dearth  of  material,  but  with  the  necessity  of  es- 
tabhshing  a  rational  dividing  Hne  between  the  churches  which 
should  be  included  and  those  which  need  not  be  touched  upon. 
As  is  indicated  in  the  introductory  chapter,  the  churches  in- 
cluded have  been  chosen  partially  for  their  historic  interest,  but 
principally  because  they  were  inheritors  and  continuers  of  the 
Colonial  traditions,  and  were  not  inspired  by  the  Greek  Re- 
vival of  the  early  portion  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Even  so, 
we  might  include  several  excellently  designed  structures  in 
each  portion  of  the  country  which  have  not  been  illustrated 
because  they  were  merely  duplications  of  other  buildings  which 
are  illustrated,  and  were  without  historical  associations  of 
more  than  local  importance. 

The  traditional  style  of  the  late  eighteenth  century  was 
continued  in  the  early  portion  of  the  nineteenth,  and,  as  might 
be  expected,  persists  much  longer  in  the  remote  and  outlying 
districts  than  it  does  in  metropolitan  centres,  where  the  new- 

106 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  107 

fashioned  architecture  was  first  developed.  In  1806  the  Greek 
Revival  had  made  little  progress  outside  of  the  large  cities, 
and  even  there  was  exhibiting  small  influence  on  design,  so 
the  First  Church  of  Christ,  Hartford,  Connecticut,  which  was 
begun  on  March  6,  1806,  is  distinctly  a  more  ornate  example 
of  the  eighteenth  century  type,  rather  than  the  beginning  of  a 
new  style.  It  is  said  to  have  been  designed  by  Mr.  Daniel 
Wadsworth,  a  citizen  of  Hartford,  so  wealthy  that  he  was 
nicknamed  the  "Maecenas"  of  the  town,  and  the  influence 
of  his  wealth  seems  to  have  been  reflected  in  the  multiphcity 
of  ornament  which  decorated  the  tower  and  the  interior.  The 
plan  is  very  simple,  consisting  of  a  nave,  with  aisles  under  gal- 
leries, the  nave  covered  with  a  coffered  barrel  vault  supported 
on  very  slender  Ionic  columns;  the  interior  is  so  admirably 
proportioned  that  it  is  of  unusual  charm.  The  tower,  while 
elaborate,  is  not  of  superlative  excellence;  the  transition  from 
the  square  to  the  octagonal  is  not  happily  made,  and  the  fre- 
quency with  which  the  tower  is  broken  up  by  cornices  does 
not  add  to  its  quietude  and  dignity.  The  congregation  is  one 
of  the  earhest  in  Connecticut,  having  been  established  in  1635 
by  settlers  from  Newtown,  Massachusetts,  who  ousted  a 
Dutch  settlement  made  two  years  previously.  The  first 
church  building  erected  by  the  congregation  was  in  use  for  only 
a  few  years,  until  1640-41,  when  it  was  given  by  the  town  to 
Mr.  Hooker  for  a  barn,  and  a  new  structure  was  built,  which 
was  occupied  for  nearly  one  hundred  years.     In  1737  the 


108  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

General  Assembly  of  the  colony  of  Connecticut  determined 
upon  the  location  of  a  new  meeting  house,  which  was  built 
from  plans  made  by  Cotton  Palmer  of  Warwick,  Rhode  Island, 
and  this  church  building  existed  until  the  one  still  standing 
was  erected.  The  exterior  is  completely  in  its  original  form, 
and  the  interior  has  been  changed  in  only  minor  respects,  the 
galleries  and  pulpit  having  been  lowered;  in  1852  the  square 
pews  were  removed  and  replaced  by  slips.  The  church 
history  has  been  quiet  and  uneventful,  the  neighborhood 
having  been  comparatively  free  from  poUtical  disturbances, 
and  the  congregation  without  men  celebrated  historically. 
Nevertheless  it  was  to  this  congregation  that  one  of  the 
founders  of  the  colony,  the  Reverend  Thomas  Hooker,  stated 
in  a  memorable  sermon,  "The  foundation  of  authority  is  laid, 
firstly,  in  the  free  consent  of  the  people,"  and  this  doctrine, 
then  for  the  first  time  pubUcly  declared  in  the  United  States, 
has  never  been  better  expressed. 

The  Second  Church  of  Christ  at  Hartford  was  built  a  httle 
more  than  twenty  years  after  the  First,  and  is  a  remarkably 
close  copy  or  adaptation  of  the  earUer  building,  but  not  quite 
so  interesting  in  design.  These  two  churches  are  a  pair  of 
which  any  town  could  well  be  proud,  but  because  of  their 
separate  locations  and  close  duphcation  of  design  they  do  not 
form  a  combination  nearly  so  interesting  as  the  three  churches 
on  the  green  at  New  Haven. 

The  grouping  of  these  three  churches  is  one  of  the  earliest 


FIRST    CHURCH    OF  CHRIST,    HARTFORD,    COiNN. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  109 

examples  of  collective  planning  which  exists  in  the  United 
States,  and  remains  certainly  one  of  the  most  beautiful. 
The  three  buildings  were  erected  at  the  same  time:  Centre 
Church  was  designed  by  Ithiel  Town,  and  Trinity  Church  and 
the  North  Church  were  designed  by  David  Hoadly,  who  super- 
intended the  construction  of  all  three,  and  the  two  men  seem 
to  have  worked  together  in  a  spirit  of  harmony  as  unusual 
to-day  as  it  was  then. 

Trinity  Church  is,  as  its  name  denotes,  Episcopalian,  and 
is  a  pseudo-Gothic  structure,  not  by  any  means  as  interesting 
as  the  other  two,  which  are  excellent  examples  of  the  Classic 
design  of  the  period,  and,  in  spite  of  its  difference  in  style, 
harmonizes  well  with  them,  because  its  mass  and  the  height 
of  its  spire  correspond  to  those  of  the  North  Church,  and 
both  are  dominated  by  the  taller  spire  and  greater  size  of  the 
Centre  Church.  All  three  of  the  buildings  were  begun  about 
1812,  and  were  finished  in  1814-15,  and  through  the  courtesy 
of  one  of  David  Hoadly's  descendants,  himself  an  architect, 
the  writer  has  learned  rather  more  about  the  designers  of  these 
structures  than  has  usually  been  possible. 

Ithiel  To^n,  who  designed  Centre  Church,  was  the  first 
architect  resident  in  New  Haven,  going  there  from  Hartford 
in  1810,  and  dying  there  in  1844.  He  was  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  of  our  early  designers,  one  of  the  promoters 
of  the  Greek  Revival,  and  was  responsible  for  a  number  of 
excellent  early  American  structures,  including  the  old  State 


no  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

House  on  the  green,  the  SaHsbury  House  on  State  Street, 
New  Haven;  Christ  Church  in  Hartford,  the  old  Merchants' 
Exchange,  afterward  used  as  a  customs  house,  in  New  York, 
and  he  was  also  consulting  architect,  if  not  the  designer,  of 
the  state  capitol  at  Raleigh,  North  Carolina,  which  remains 
to-day  one  of  the  most  beautiful,  and  one  of  the  best-planned, 
of  our  state  capitols.  His  Centre  Church  was  supposed  to 
have  been  copied  from  St.-Martins-in-the-Fields  at  London, 
but  as  it  was  built  of  red  brick  with  white-painted  wooden 
ornamental  parts,  the  effect  was  not  very  similar  to  that  of 
the  stone  English  building.  In  1845  the  entire  structure  was 
painted  a  dull  lead  color,  seriously  detracting  from  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  building,  and  at  this  time  also  the  interior  of 
the  church  was  extensively  remodeled,  a  low  dome  being 
introduced,  and  possibly  the  reredos  added.  The  framing 
of  the  wooden  tower  was  very  ingenious,  each  story  being  a 
separate  structure  running  through  the  one  below,  down  to 
the  brickwork.  In  1912  the  paint  was  removed  from  the  brick 
and  the  woodwork  repainted  white,  so  that  from  the  exterior 
the  structure  is  again  its  original  self,  and  is  a  very  lovely  piece 
of  design. 

David  Hoadly,  the  architect  of  the  North  Church  and  of 
Trinity  Church,  was  born  in  1774  at  Waterbury,  Connecticut; 
he  was  either  self -trained  or  learned  from  practical  experience 
under  architect-contractors  with  whom  he  worked  on  the  Con- 
gregational Meeting  House  at  Waterbury,  built  in  1792;  the 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  111 

Meeting  House  at  Norfolk,  Connecticut,  and  that  at  Milford, 
Connecticut.  In  1814  he  moved  his  family  to  New  Haven, 
where,  besides  the  churches  already  spoken  of,  he  built  the 
Tontine  Hotel,  the  Sargent  house,  and  several  other  houses,  and 
was  either  the  architect  or  assisted  the  architect  of  the  old 
State  House,  now  the  City  Hall,  at  Hartford.  He  died  in  July, 
1839. 

An  interesting  memorial  of  his  work  was  found  when  the 
Sargent  house  was  destroyed  to  make  room  for  the  new  hbrary 
building.  The  following  inscription  was  discovered  on  a  tablet 
in  the  foundation  walls:  "I  have  caused  this  beautiful 
building  to  be  erected  for  your  use  as  well  as  for  mine,  &  have 
taken  much  pains  to  accommodate  you  for  which  you  will 
never  pay,  &  being  no  relative  of  mine  I  demand  that  you 
assemble  your  friends  together  on  every  26th  day  of  May  in 
honor  of  the  independence  of  South  America,  it  being  on  that 
day  in  the  year  1810  that  the  inhabitants  of  Buenos  Ayres 
established  a  free  government. 

"David  Hoadly,  Architect, 
*'L.  Butler,  Mason, 
*'D.  RiTTER,  Script." 
It  may  be  said  in  explanation  of  this  curious  inscription 
that  Mr.  Sargent  was  a  good  friend  of  Mr.  Hoadly  and  had 
been  the  American  Consul-General  at  Buenos  Ayres  when  the 
Revolution  occurred;  the  inscription  is  indicative  of  the  very 
general  interest  taken  in  the  United  States  in  the  rebellion 


112  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

against  Spanish  rule  in  South  America,  and  the  rejoicing  over 
its  success.  It  is  also  interesting  to  note  that  Hoadly  signed 
himself  "architect,"  although  it  is  probable  that  his  function, 
as  in  the  case  of  many  of  the  other  early  American  architects, 
included  at  least  some  of  the  duties  now  the  contractor's;  and 
that  he  was  very  truly  an  architect  in  feeling  as  well  as  in  ability 
is  indicated  by  his  feeling  that  the  interest  and  love  an  archi- 
tect puts  into  his  works,  the  "pains"  as  he  calls  it,  cannot  be 
repaid  by  mere  money,  but  only  by  appreciation. 

The  building  of  these  three  churches  was  diflScult,  since  the 
lumber  for  them  was  obtained  largely  from  the  Connecticut 
River,  down  which  it  was  floated  in  rafts  and  was  then  trans- 
ported by  boat  to  New  Haven.  As  this  was  in  war  time  and 
there  was  a  very  strict  blockade  of  the  Sound,  the  progress  of 
the  buildings  was  considerably  impeded,  so  much  so,  in  fact, 
that  the  work  at  one  time  was  stopped  altogether.  The  archi- 
tect, Mr.  Hoadly,  applied  to  the  Governor  of  Connecticut, 
requesting  him  to  communicate  with  the  commander  of  his 
Majesty's  fleet  to  permit  the  free  transportation  of  the  ma- 
terials for  these  churches.  The  following  letter,  addressed 
to  Mr.  John  Kingsbury  of  Waterbury,  from  his  brother,  at 
this  time  Secretary  of  the  State  of  Connecticut,  will  be  of  in- 
terest: 

New  London,  Conn.,  19th  July,  1814. 
Dear  Brother: 

Your  letter  by  Mr.  Hoadly  of  Waterbury  I  received,  since 
which  a  flag  has  been  sent  on  board  of  one  of  His  Majesty's 


CENTER  CHURCH,  NEW  HAVEN,  CONN. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  113 

ships,  and  I  have  this  day  received  an  answer  by  a  Flag  from 
His  Majesty's  ship  Superb,  with  an  open  letter,  addressed  to 
His  Excellency  John  Cotton  Smith,  which  I  shall  forward  to 
him  immediately  by  mail.  The  contents  of  the  open  letter  are 
as  follows:  "In  compliance  to  your  request  in  favor  of  the 
Wardens  and  Vestrymen  of  Trinity  Church  in  New  Haven, 
the  ships  under  my  orders  will  be  directed  not  to  molest  any 
vessels  that  on  examination  prove  to  be  literally  engaged  in 
conveying  from  the  Connecticut  the  materials  in  question  to 
New  Haven  for  the  purposes  of  erecting  a  church." 

It  will  be  most  proper  in  my  opinion  for  Mr.  Hoadly  to 
wait  on  His  Excellency  Governor  Smith  and  receive  from  him 
a  certified  copy  of  the  permit  from  Captain  Paget.  Give  my 
love  to  your  children  and  accept  of  this  from  your  friend  and 
brother, 

Jacob  Kingsbury. 
John  Kingsbury,  Esq., 

Waterbury. 

The  blockading  fleet,  by  the  way,  was  in  command  of  Com- 
modore Hardy,  the  same  Hardy  who  received  Nelson's  dying 
words. 

The  first  congregation  at  New  Haven  was  begun  in  1637, 
when  the  town  was  founded,  and  the  first  house  of  worship 
(fifty  feet  square)  was  dedicated  on  April  18,  1638,  and  this 
early  congregation  is  remarkable  as  being  the  first  in  which 
a  union  was  formed  between  the  Separatist  element  and  ^the 
Puritans  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  the  covenant  was  so 
broad  that  church  membership  was  conditioned  only  upon 
the  acknowledgment  of  belief  in  Christianity.  In  1670  a  new 
building  was  begun  which  lasted  until  1757,  when  the  third 


114  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

structure  was  built  upon  the  original  site,  and  endured  until 
the  present  church  was  completed  in  1814.  The  connection 
of  Centre  Church  with  Yale  University  has  been  close  for 
many  years,  the  graduating  exercises  having  been  held  there 
for  a  very  long  time,  and  the  graveyard  around  the  old  building 
contains  the  bodies  of  many  of  the  pioneers  of  the  city  of  New 
Haven,  among  them  three  of  the  so-called  "regicides,"  the 
judges  who  voted  for  the  execution  of  Charles  I. 

The  church  at  Lyme  is  included  in  this  volume  on  rather 
a  doubtful  basis,  since  the  building  of  which  the  photograph 
was  made  is  not  an  old  structure,  but  as  nearly  a  duplicate 
of  the  one  which  was  burned  in  1907  as  the  cleverness  of  the 
architect  could  make  it.  The  elevations  were  drawn  by  work- 
ing back  on  the  principles  of  perspective  from  the  photographs 
of  the  old  building,  assisted  by  such  data  as  could  be  got 
from  the  foundations,  and  from  what  scanty  measurements 
remained.  The  building  is  illustrated  in  spite  of  this  fact, 
because  it  is  so  nearly  identical  with  the  old  that  photographs 
made  from  the  old  and  new  buildings  can  easily  be  confused, 
and  the  loveliness  of  the  building  makes  it  seem  worth  while. 
The  reconstruction  was  by  Mr.  Ernest  Greene.  The  architect 
of  the  original  building  is  not  known,  and  Mr.  Chapman  of 
Lyme,  the  present  rector,  states  "that  there  is  a  tradition  that 
the  plans  were  brought  from  London  by  one  of  the  Lyme  ship 
captains,'*  and  adds:  "Although  I  am  well  disposed  toward 
such  traditions,  and  would  gladly  prove  their  truth,  I  am 


THE    NORTH    CHURCH,    NEW    HAVEN,    CONN. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  115 

forced  to  be  skeptical  with  reference  to  this  one,  and  am  in- 
cHned  also  to  think  that  the  tradition  may  have  arisen  from 
some  book  of  instruction  to  master  builders  such  as  was  cur- 
rent, I  believe,  in  those  days,  and  might  well  have  been  im- 
ported from  England  by  one  of  the  Lyme  captains."  The 
contract  for  the  construction  of  this  church  has  been  preserved, 
and  in  itself  would  seem  to  confute  the  theory  that  the  plans 
were  imported,  and  this  contract  is  of  so  much  interest  as 
shedding  hght  on  the  methods  of  construction  of  that  day 
that  it  is  here  copied  in  full: 

"THIS  INDENTURE  made  &  executed  this  23rd  day  of 
December,  A.D.  1815,  by  &  between  Samuel  Belcher  of  Elling- 
ton in  the  County  of  Tolland,  and  the  first  Ecclesiastical  So- 
ciety of  the  town  of  Lyme,  by  their  Committee,  viz:  Matthew 
Griswold,  Joseph  Noyes,  William  Noyes,  Richard  McCurdy, 
Nathaniel  Matson,  Israel  Matson,  Watrous  Beckwith,  Benja- 
min Coult,  John  Peck,  EHsha  Day,  Diodat  I.  Griswold,  Enoch 
Lord,  Exra  Lee,  John  Highs,  and  David  Wait. 

"WITNESSETH,  That  the  said  Belcher  for  the  consideration 
herein  after  specified,  Covenants  &  agrees  with  the  said  society, 
to  build  a  Meeting  House  where  said  Committee  shall  direct, 
upon  that  Lot  of  land  fixed  by  the  County  Court — Build 
the  main  body  of  said  House  57  feet  in  length  &  47  ft.  in  width, 
with  30  foot  posts,  and  a  Projection  of  Portico  5  ft.  in  length  & 
30  ft.  in  width,  supported  by  four  Columns  —  to  build  the 
Steeple  with  a  Lightning  Rod  and  Vane  similar  to  those  of 
the  Brick  Meeting  House  in  Lebanon  —  to  Elevate  the  roof 
as  the  Committee  shall  direct  —  to  put  the  frame  together  & 
make  it  in  all  respects  equal  to  that  of  the  Meeting  House  in 


116  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

Ellington  —  to  finish  the  Pediment  and  Columns  in  the  Ionic 
order,  the  sides  with  Ionic  entablature,  and  the  other  end  & 
belfry  with  the  Ionic  cornice  —  to  make  44  windows  in  House, 
containing  40  squares  each  7  &  9  glass,  equal  to  the  Enghsh 
Crown  glass  —  two  Venetian  windows  of  a  suitable  size  with 
a  semi-circular  window  in  the  Pediment  &  gable  end  of  the 
House  and  one  window  of  a  suitable  size  in  the  belfry  —  to 
make  three  Doors  in  front  —  to  finish  the  doors  and  windows 
with  double  architraves  &  Keystones,  excepting  the  Pulpit 
Window  which  is  to  be  finished  with  a  Frontispiece  in  the  Ionic 
order  —  to  Sheath  the  outside  of  the  House  with  J  inch  square 
edge  oak  boards  laid  in  the  closest  manner  and  covered  with 
the  best  kind  of  white  pine  Clapboards  six  inches  in  width  & 
nailed  with  sufficient  wrought  nails  —  to  cover  the  roof  with 
good  square  edged  oak  boards  f  of  an  inch  in  thickness  laid 
in  hke  manner  —  and  the  best  of  pine  shingles  18  inches  in 
length  jointed  &  laid  out  not  more  than  5  inches  —  to  paint 
with  two  good  coats  of  Paint  the  clapboards  of  the  House  with 
a  bright  straw  Color  or  white  as  the  Committee  shall  direct. 
All  the  ornamented  parts  &  Steeple  white  &  the  roof  with  a 
bright  red  or  slate  color  as  said  committee  shall  direct  —  to 
lay  double  floors,  the  under  one  with  J  inch  chestnut  boards  and 
the  upper  one  with  good  inch  oak  boards  —  to  make  the  porch 
on  the  ground  floor  at  the  east  end,  9  feet  in  width  with  two 
flights  of  stairs  —  to  divide  the  ground  floor  into  Pews  and 
slips  as  said  Committee  shall  direct  —  to  finish  the  Pulpit  & 
Stairs  in  the  style  of  those  in  the  North  Brick  Meeting  House 
in  New  Haven,  provided  the  expense  of  the  Pulpit  does  not 
exceed  the  expense  of  that  at  Ellington,  &  if  it  does,  to  finish 
the  Pulpit  in  the  same  manner  as  that  at  Ellington,  to  make 
the  Breastwork  of  the  Gallery  opposite  the  pulpit  circular  and 
finish  it  and  the  Columns  in  a  style  equal  to  that  of  the  pulpit 
—  make  three  Doors  in  the  partition  of  the  Porch  leading  into 


THE    FIRST    CONGREGATIONAL    CHURCH,    LYME,    CONN. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  117 

the  main  body  of  the  House  —  to  finish  all  the  doors  and 
windows  in  the  inside  with  double  architraves  —  to  divide  the 
Gallery  into  pews  and  slips  as  the  Committee  shall  direct  —  to 
make  in  the  CeiUng  over  head  a  handsome  oval  arch  extending 
from  end  to  end  &  from  side  to  side  with  a  handsome  cor- 
nice at  the  springing  of  the  arch  around  the  same  —  Lath  & 
plaster  the  inside  and  paint  all  the  wood  work  where  necessary 
—  to  make  the  stairs  ascending  to  the  beKry  &  above  bell 
deck,  and  the  floors  of  the  belfry  &  over  the  bell  deck  in  the 
best  possible  manner  with  two  inch  white  pine  plank  well  and 
sufficiently  painted  —  to  cover  the  square  or  body  of  the 
belfry  in  the  same  manner  as  the  outside  of  the  House  —  to 
furnish  all  the  materials  for  same  House  and  where  necessary 
of  the  best  quahty  and  perform  the  work  in  the  best  manner 
and  in  point  of  style,  materials  and  workmanship  to  make  said 
House  equal  to  any  Meeting  House  in  the  State  of  Connec- 
ticut east  of  the  Connecticut  River  —  to  have  said  house  half 
finished  by  the  first  day  of  Oct.  next,  and  completed  in  every 
respect  on  or  before  the  1st  day  of  July  1817. 

"It  is  also  agreed  by  the  parties,  that  should  any  accident 
happen  to  said  Meeting  House  while  building,  either  by  the 
act  of  God  or  otherwise  (except  through  the  negligence  or 
carelessness  of  said  Belcher  or  his  workmen),  the  loss  is  to  be  sus- 
tained by  said  Society;  And  the  said  Society,  by  their  said  Com- 
mittee on  their  part,  in  consideration  of  the  premises  aforesaid 
covenant  and  agree  with  the  said  Belcher  to  dehver  on  the  spot 
where  said  House  is  to  be  built,  on  or  before  the  10th  day  of  May 
next,  or  as  soon  after  as  required  by  the  said  Belcher,  all  the 
timber  contained  in  the  schedule  hereto  annexed  well  hewed, 
free  from  wane,  and  of  the  first  quahty,  and  all  the  joists  and 
boards  contained  in  said  schedule  well  sawed  and  according 
to  the  dimensions  given,  to  defray  the  expenses  of  raising  said 
House  except  the  labor  of  said  Belcher  &  his  workmen  to  pre- 


118  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

pare  as  soon  as  necessary  the  foundation  ready  to  lay  the  sills 
and  the  risers  &  Step  Stones  to  support  the  Columns  —  To  pay 
to  the  said  Belcher  —  upon  the  signing  of  this  Indenture  and 
as  soon  as  the  outside  of  said  House  is  completed  or  other  work 
equal  thereto  —  and  —  when  said  House  shall  be  completed  ac- 
cording to  Contract  —  and  in  case  said  sum  shall  not  be  paid 
at  the  time  specified  interest  is  to  be  allowed  upon  the  same 
until  paid. 

**The  whole  to  be  paid  in  money  Current  in  this  State  —  In 
Witness  whereof  the  parties  have  hereunto  set  their  Hands  —  the 
day  &  year  above  written." 


Mr.  Chapman  continues:  "Very  little  is  known  of  Samuel 
Belcher,  the  builder  of  the  church,  and  I  suspect  him  to  have 
been  a  master  builder  of  excellent  capacity  rather  than  a 
trained  architect.  The  work  is  reputed  to  have  been  done 
largely  by  ship  carpenters,  many  of  whom  were,  as  you  know, 
highly  skilled  artisans;  and  I  often  wondered  at  the  grace  and 
restrained  beauty  of  the  decoration  of  the  interior. 

"It  is  interesting  to  learn  that  the  four  columns  mentioned 
in  the  contract,  each  of  which  was  about  twenty-three  feet  in 
length  and  about  two  and  a  half  feet  in  diameter,  were  single 
pine  sticks.  These  were  probably  floated  down  the  Connec- 
ticut; the  core  was  bored  out  of  each  with  a  ship's  pump  auger; 
they  were  rounded  and  fluted,  and  then  set  up  in  their  places 
to  stand  for  ninety  years." 

The  Congregational  Church  at  East  Avon,  built  in  1819,  is 
typical  of  the  plainer  New  England  meeting  houses  of  the 


THE    EAST    AVON    CONGREGATIONAL    CHURCH 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  119 

early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  it  is  included  for  that 
reason,  rather  than  because  of  its  intrinsic  merit.  There  were 
dozens  of  small  churches  in  the  rural  communities  erected  by 
local  carpenters  or  builders,  probably  without  architectural 
drawings,  aside  from  those  that  could  be  obtained  from  the 
books  of  Asher  Benjamin  and  others  of  that  sort,  such  as  were 
referred  to  in  speaking  of  the  Lyme  church. 

Another  thing  that  leads  the  writer  to  believe  that  most  of 
these  small  churches  were  copied  out  of  books,  is  the  fact  that 
the  reredos  (if  a  Congregational  Church  can  be  said  to  have 
one)  is  usually  poorly  treated,  although  the  pulpit  and  reading 
desks  were  well  designed ;  and  in  looking  over  these  old  books 
we  find  many  designs  for  these  articles  of  furniture,  but  none 
for  the  treatment  of  the  back  wall  of  a  church,  so  that  the 
builders  had  nothing  to  guide  them  and  were  forced  to  design 
as  best  they  could. 

The  First  Congregational  Church  at  Guilford  is  quite  similar 
to  that  already  described  at  Lyme,  and  is  one  of  the  latest  of 
the  New  England  churches  in  which  the  pure  Colonial  tradi- 
tion was  followed,  it  having  been  begun  only  in  1829.  The 
funds  for  its  erection  were  collected  by  subscription,  the  sub- 
scribers receiving  pews,  or  slips,  as  they  were  then  called,  in 
proportion  to  the  amount  of  their  subscription,  although 
many  of  the  congregation  were  in  favor  of  raising  the  fimds 
by  taxation,  and  seating  the  congregation  in  the  order  of  their 
age,  as  had  been  the  previous  custom.     The  Congregational 


120  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

Church  had,  however,  been  disestabhshed  as  a  State  Church 
in  Connecticut  in  1818,  and  this  method  was  therefore  im- 
practical. The  contract  for  the  construction  was  let  to  Ira 
Atwater  and  Wilson  Booth,  of  New  Haven,  for  $6,500,  and 
the  size  of  the  church  was  fixed  in  the  contract  at  sixty  feet 
wide  and  eighty  feet  long.  The  portico  and  tower  were  the 
subject  of  separate  contract,  bringing  the  total  cost  of  the 
church  to  about  $7,400.  The  pews  were  held  by  the  original 
purchasers,  and  the  church  was  supported  by  assessment  of 
its  members  until  1850,  when  the  pew  owners  gave  them  to 
the  church  by  a  joint  deed,  and  those  pews  which  were  held 
by  heirs  of  the  original  owners,  or  by  persons  no  longer  mem- 
bers of  the  society,  were  purchased. 

Changes  in  the  church  have  been  sHght,  and  these  mainly 
in  the  interior:  the  galleries  were  lowered,  the  organs  built, 
and  the  church  frescoed,  but  otherwise  the  structure  remains 
substantially  in  its  original  condition.  It  should  be  added 
that  this  is  the  third  church  of  the  congregation,  the  first 
having  been  built  about  1650,  and  the  second  in  1714.  There 
is  no  designer  named  in  the  church  histories  or  other  docu- 
ments relating  to  the  building. 

In  the  previous  chapters  some  attempt  has  been  made  to 
give  the  names  of  other  existing  churches  of  the  period  which 
have  not  been  thought  sufficiently  interesting  to  be  illustrated, 
but  the  remaining  churches  of  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century  are  so  numerous,  and  the  dividing  line  between  the 


FIRST    CONGREGATIONAL    CHURCH,    GUILFORD,    CONN. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  121 

churches  architecturally  of  Colonial  origin  and  those  of  the 
later  Classic  period  is  so  indefinite,  that  no  complete  Ust  would 
be  possible.  A  few  of  these  churches  of  some  size  and  in- 
terest, although  substantially  duplicates  of  churches  already  in- 
cluded, might  be  named.  The  three  churches  at  Simsbury, 
Southington,  and  Litchfield  are  substantially  hke  those  at  Lyme 
and  Guilford,  although  the  Litchfield  church  has  had  the  tower 
destroyed,  and  is  now  used  as  a  moving-picture  theatre;  and 
on  the  Sound  shore  there  are  besides  those  already  mentioned 
churches  at  Darien,  Mystic,  and  Noank.  Besides  those  men- 
tioned, the  list  could  be  extended  considerably  further,  but 
probably  without  contributing  anything  of  value  to  those 
already  illustrated. 


CHAPTER  VII 

CHURCHES  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  IN  AND  ABOUT 

MASSACHUSETTS 

THE  Massachusetts  churches  of  this  period  differed  in 
no  important  respects  from  those  in  Connecticut. 
The  church  construction,  especially  in  the  rural  com- 
munities, had  grown  to  be  more  or  less  a  formula,  since  there 
had  been  already  erected  a  suflScient  number  of  architecturally 
excellent  buildings  which  served  as  precedents  for  practically 
all  of  the  later  country  buildings,  and  in  the  cities  alone  were 
the  new  buildings  designed  from  the  beginning. 

Another  interesting  feature  of  this  period  is  the  very  strong 
influence  which  Asher  Benjamin's  books  had  upon  design. 
We  find  repeatedly  that  buildings  were  apparently  constructed 
from  his  sketches,  and  we  find  continual  use  of  the  ornament,  in 
proportions  laid  down  by  him  for  various  parts  of  buildings, 
in  the  churches  subsequent  to  the  publication  of  his  books. 
This  is  especially  true  of  the  towns  along  the  valley  of  the 
Connecticut  River,  since  he  worked  in  that  section  of  the 
country,  and  at  least  one,  and  probably  more,  of  his  books 
were  pubHshed  in  Greenfield,  Massachusetts,  and  so  strong 
was  the  type  which  he  either  expressed  or  created  that  it 
is  only  in  parts  of  New  England  quite  far  removed  from  the 

122 


THE    FIRST    CONGREGATIONAL    CHURCH,    BENNINGTON,    VT. 


INTERIOR,    THE    FIRST    CONGREGATIONAL    CHURCH,    BENNINGTON,    VT. 


EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES  123 

Connecticut  Valley  that  we  find  evidences  of  really  original 
design. 

The  widespread  influence  which  books  had  upon  design  in 
the  late  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth  centuries  seems  sur- 
prising to  the  reader  of  to-day,  but,  upon  reflection,  we  will 
realize  that  this  was  only  natural.  In  the  first  place,  there 
were  no  schools  of  architecture;  the  designers  —  whether  they 
were  contractors  or  called  themselves  architects  —  were  in- 
evitably self-taught  to  a  large  extent,  learning  the  practical 
side  of  their  work  from  carpenters  in  their  immediate  vicinity. 
Travel  was,  of  course,  extremely  diflScult  and  expensive,  and 
while  it  is  likely  that  a  certain  number  of  early  American 
designers  travelled  about  in  their  own  neighborhood  to  learn 
by  observation,  general  and  widespread  knowledge  of  a  large 
part  of  the  country,  such  as  we  to-day  possess,  was  impossible 
to  a  great  majority  of  the  earlier  men.  It  is  true  that  in  some 
cases  we  find  that  either  the  architects  or  the  committees  in 
charge  of  construction  did  travel  for  the  specific  purpose  of 
examining  such  existing  structures  as  were  in  their  day 
considered  meritorious.  Such  a  trip  was,  as  mentioned  in  an 
earlier  chapter,  made  by  the  committee  in  charge  of  the  build- 
ing of  the  Baptist  Church  at  Providence,  and,  as  a  result,  one 
of  the  committee  became  the  designer.  Such  travel  was, 
however,  rather  the  exception  than  the  rule,  and  the  designers 
of  early  churches  pinned  most  of  their  faith  upon  traditions  of 
their  own  immediate  vicinity  aided  by  a  certain  number  of  books. 


124  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

The  influence  of  these  books  was  more  potent  than  it  would 
be  to-day  even  to  the  untravelled  architect,  because  photo- 
graphs were  unknown,  and  books  were  so  much  rarer  that  the 
written  word  commanded  a  respect  not  now  accorded  it.  The 
very  fact  that  a  man's  ideas  were  printed  conferred  upon  them 
some  semblance  of  authority,  and  opinions  were  easily  accepted 
as  facts.  Now,  all  these  conditions  probably  worked  to  the 
betterment  of  Colonial  architecture,  since  the  books  which 
were  in  use  by  the  Colonial  builders  were  of  an  average  merit 
far  beyond  those  of  the  present  generation,  although,  like 
most  of  our  books  to-day,  their  basis  was  the  classic  proportions 
as  laid  down  by  Vitruvius  and  drawn  out  and  pubhshed  by 
Palladio  and  Vignola. 

Like  the  others,  the  books  written  by  Asher  Benjamin  had 
their  foundation  on  the  classic,  and  each  one  of  his  numerous 
books  includes  very  careful  drawings  of  each  order,  with  pos- 
sible variations  for  the  entablature  and  base,  and  so  great 
was  his  reverence  for  the  orders  that  he  states:  "The  orders  of 
architecture,  as  has  been  observed,  are  the  basis  upon  which 
the  whole  decorative  part  of  the  art  is  chiefly  built,  and  toward 
which  the  attention  of  the  artist  must  ever  be  directed,  even 
where  no  orders  are  introduced";  and  this  much  is  just  as  true 
to-day,  of  all  the  buildings  executed  in  the  classic  style  as  it 
was  the  hundred  odd  years  ago  when  Benjamin  wrote.  He 
was  a  man  not  only  of  artistic  intelligence,  but  of  good,  sound 
common  sense,  and  many  interesting  side  hghts  are  thrown 


MEETING    HOUSE    HALL,    DORCHESTER,    MASSACHUSETTS 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  125 

upon  the  methods  of  construction  and  the  attitude  of  mind  of 
the  designers  of  the  Colonial  period  by  the  shrewd  and  homely 
remarks  which  continually  occurred  in  his  writings.  He  real- 
ized, for  example,  that  "books  on  architecture  are  already  so 
numerous  that  adding  to  their  number  may  be  thought  to 
require  some  apology,"  with  which  the  writer  can  only  agree 
in  presenting  this  one,  but  Benjamin's  reason  for  adding  to  the 
number  was  to  convince  that  "the  style  of  building  in  this 
country  differs  very  considerably  from  that  of  Great  Britain 
and  other  countries  in  Europe,  which  is  partly  in  consequence 
of  a  more  liberal  appropriation  made  for  building  in  those 
countries,  and  of  the  difference  in  materials  used,  particularly 
in  the  external  decorations ;  as  the  principal  part  of  our  designs 
have  been  executed  by  our  own  hands,  we  feel  confident  that 
this  publication  will  be  found  to  contain  more  useful  informa- 
tion for  the  American  workman  than  the  European  books 
which  have  appeared  in  this  country,  and  which,  for  the  most 
part,  are  mere  copies  one  from  the  other." 

Again,  in  writing  of  the  orders,  he  says  "that  an  exact 
imitation  of  the  noble  productions  of  earlier  days,  on  account 
of  the  present  expense  of  materials  and  labor,  would  require  no 
common  degree  of  opulence  for  their  completion,  and,  indeed, 
a  strict  conformity  to  the  orders  of  architecture  seems  to  be 
demanded  in  the  construction  of  public  buildings  only  and 
others  of  immense  magnitude.  In  such  situations  they  have 
a  most  noble  and  majestic  appearance,  but  in  private  buildings, 


126  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

and  others  of  less  magnitude,  their  massy  size  and  the  expense 
attending  them  are  Httle  suited  to  our  convenience  and  means 
of  appropriation.  A  principal  part,  therefore,  of  our  design  in 
this  work  is  to  lighten  the  heavy  parts  and  thereby  lessen  the 
expense  both  of  labor  and  materials. 

"Attempts  which  have  sometimes  been  made  to  compose 
fancy  orders  have  only  spoiled  the  work  and  no  reduction  of 
expense  has  been  effected.  .  .  .  One  important  object  in 
improvement  is  a  method  of  preserving  the  apparent  size  of  an 
object  elevated  above  the  eye,  while,  at  the  same  time,  the 
real  size  is  considerably  diminished." 

"It  is  easy  to  conceive  that  the  size  and  effect  of  a  cornice, 
for  instance,  does  not  depend  on  its  height  as  it  does  on  its 
projection;  because  cornices  are  always  elevated  to  a  con- 
siderable distance  above  the  eye,  and,  of  course,  the  apparent 
size  depends  principally  on  the  projection." 

From  the  above  quotations  we  learn  that  the  hghter  and 
more  delicate  proportions  of  Colonial  architecture  were  not 
used  without  a  realization  on  the  part  of  their  designers  that 
they  were  not  adhering  to  the  canonical  proportions,  and 
Benjamin,  with  all  his  reverence  for  the  orders,  has  never 
drawn  them  in  the  classic  proportion,  not  because  he  was  igno- 
rant, but  because  he  felt  that  that  proportion  was  wrong. 

He  says:  "We  have  ventured  to  make  some  alterations 
in  the  proportion  of  the  different  orders  by  lengthening  the 
shafts  of  the  columns  two  diameters.     Their  entablatures  and 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  127 

pedestals  bear  nearly  the  same  proportion  as  formerly  except 
that  the  architrave  has  less  height,  the  frieze  more  height  (ex- 
cept in  the  Doric),  and  the  cornice  less  height  and  more  pro- 
jection." 

Nor  did  Benjamin  arrive  at  these  conclusions  entirely  arbi- 
trarily; he  actually  worked  out,  in  a  sort  of  perspective,  the 
space  which  the  classic  order  would  occupy,  and  compared  it 
with  the  order  as  developed  by  him,  "assuming  that  both 
cornices  were  regarded  at  an  angle  of  45  degrees  from  the  hori- 
zon, which  is  the  angle  cornices  are  commonly  seen  at."  Com- 
paring the  two  cornices  from  this  angle,  he  says:  "This 
experiment  proves  that  a  cornice,  when  seen  at  an  angle  of  45 
degrees,  may  be  diminished  one  third  of  its  height  and  appear 
to  the  spectator  to  be  diminished  only  two  elevenths,  and,  when 
seen  at  an  angle  of  fifty  degrees,  it  may  be  diminished  one 
third  and  only  appear  to  be  diminished  one  sixth.  Now  by 
this  it  appears  that  if  cornices  are  in  the  original  orders  one 
sixth  too  large,  which  they  really  are,  they  could  be  dimin- 
ished one  third  and  have  the  appearance  of  being  diminished 
only  one  sixth,  which  will  make  a  saving  of  at  least  one  quarter 
of  the  expense,  besides  saving  us  much  of  the  height  of  the 
whole  building,  and  at  the  same  time  have  a  lighter  and  better 
appearance." 

This  was  accepted  as  Gospel  truth  by  the  men  who  used 
Benjamin's  books,  for  it  never  occurred  to  Benjamin  or  his 
contemporaries  that  cornices  had  actually  been  considered  by 


128  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

Palladio  and  Vignola  as  things  to  be  built  and  not  merely  as 
drawings,  and  that  Palladio  and  Vignola,  as  well  as  Benjamin, 
had  determined  the  proportions  of  their  cornices  and  orders 
with  regard  to  perspective  as  well  as  direct  elevation;  but  we 
do  at  least  learn  from  this  that  Benjamin  thought  about  the 
proportion  of  his  work  in  the  round,  and  not  in  the  drawing, 
which  may  be  the  real  reason  that  so  much  of  the  Colonial 
work  is  executed  well,  for  an  all  too  common  fault  in  modern 
architecture  is  to  design  an  elevation  without  regard  to  per- 
spective. 

Aside  from  Benjamin's  remarks  on  the  orders,  we  find  his 
advice  in  other  matters  sound  and  sensible.  Of  ornament,  he 
says :  "It  should  neither  be  frugally  employed  nor  distributed 
with  too  much  profusion.  Its  value  will  increase  in  proportion 
to  the  judgment  and  discretion  shown  in  its  application," 
and  no  professor  in  the  Beaux  Arts  ever  qualified  the  use  of 
ornament  in  more  sound  and  striking  terms  than  did  this 
country  carpenter  of  Greenfield,  Mass.  Again  about  orna- 
ment, he  writes:  "The  most  exquisite  ornaments  lose  all 
their  value  if  they  load,  alter,  or  confuse  the  form  they  are 
designed  to  enrich  and  adorn.'* 

Developing  this  theory,  he  says:  "When  friezes  or  other 
longer  members  are  to  be  enriched,  the  ornaments  may  be 
significant  and  serve  to  indicate  the  destination  or  use  of  the 
building,  the  rank,  qualities,  profession,  and  achievements  of 
the  owner.     In  sacred  places  all  obscene,  grotesque,  and 


THE    PARK    STREET    CHURCH,    BOSTON,   MASS. 


EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES  U9 

heathenish  representations  ought  to  be  avoided;  for  indecent 
fables,  extraordinary  conceits,  or  instruments  and  symbols  of 
pagan  worship  are  very  improper  ornaments  in  structures 
consecrated  to  Christian  devotion." 

While  to-day  we  need  no  advice  regarding  obscene  represen- 
tations, Benjamin's  remarks  regarding  the  decoration  of  friezes 
might  be  well  taken  to  heart  by  those  architects  who  persist 
in  decorating  triglyphs  with  bulls'  skulls  or  with  lyres  —  objects 
which  in  themselves  are  neither  particularly  decorative  nor 
indicative  of  the  use  of  the  building,  and  only  sheer  laziness  of 
design  induces  our  architects  to  continue  to  use  the  ornaments 
originally  designed  to  indicate  the  destination  of  the  building, 
but  which  do  not  at  all  indicate  the  use  of  the  modern  structure 
to  which  they  are  applied. 

The  remarks  which  we  have  quoted  will  serve  to  show  the 
soundness  of  the  theory  which  Asher  Benjamin  pursued,  and 
it  need  only  be  said  of  the  concrete  examples  with  which  he 
illustrates  his  theories  that  they  no  wise  fall  behind  the  theory 
in  aptness  and  good  taste,  and  whether  the  high  quality  of  his 
design  was  appreciated  by  his  contemporaries,  or  whether  they 
were  influenced  alone  by  the  accessibility  of  his  publications, 
it  is  certain  that  his  influence  was  beneficial  and  intense. 

The  First  Congregational  Church  at  Bennington,  Vermont, 
was  dedicated  on  New  Year's  Day,  1806,  and  the  church  rec- 
ords do  not  give  any  information  about  its  designer;  but  we 
find  in  Asher  Benjamin's  book,  *'The  Country  Builder's  Assis- 


130  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

tant,"  published  in  Greenfield,  Massachusetts,  in  1805,  a 
design  for  a  church  which  is  so  very  nearly  similar  to  the  Ben- 
nington Church  that  the  writer  can  only  surmise  that  either 
this  building  was  built  by  Benjamin  or  that  possibly  Benjamin 
had  access  to  the  plans  before  his  book  was  written,  a  thing 
quite  improbable.  The  differences  between  the  Bennington 
Church  and  that  given  in  Benjamin's  book  are,  so  far  as  the 
exterior  goes,  the  use  of  circular-headed  windows  instead  of 
square  in  the  second  story  of  the  main  building,  the  addition 
of  a  small  entrance  porch  at  the  right-hand  corner,  and  the 
omission  of  urns  shown  in  Benjamin's  design  at  the  corners  of 
the  square  tower,  where  something  of  the  sort  is  unques- 
tionably needed.  Otherwise,  the  tower,  the  proportions  of  the 
building,  the  treatment  of  the  fagade,  and  the  detail  are  pre- 
cisely similar  to  that  given  in  the  book.  The  treatment  of 
the  interior  is,  however,  not  the  same,  Benjamin's  scheme 
show^ing  a  high  pulpit,  which  might,  of  course,  have  been  part 
of  the  original  design,  since  the  present  pulpit  is  evidently  a 
reconstruction;  and  the  ceiHng  treatment  over  the  galleries 
is  also  different,  but  the  points  of  resemblance,  even  in  the  in- 
terior, are  more  marked  than  the  points  of  difference. 

The  first  settlement  at  Bennington  was  made  about  1760, 
and  the  first  meeting  house  was  built  about  1764-65.  Ethan 
Allen  was  a  member  of  the  congregation,  and  the  rector  at  the 
time  of  the  Revolution  was  the  Reverend  Mr.  Dewey,  an 
ancestor  of  Admiral  Dewey.      After  the  battle  of  Bennington 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  131 

some  of  the  captives  were  for  a  while  confined  in  this  meeting 
house,  and  the  first  legislature  of  the  State  of  Vermont  began 
its  existence  in  this  building,  and  many  subsequent  legisla- 
tures assembled  there  before  the  State  House  was  built. 

There  is  one  story  of  Ethan  Allen  which  deserves  repetition : 
After  his  return  from  the  capture  of  Ticonderoga,  the  parson, 
Mr.  Dewey,  held  a  thanksgiving  service,  and  in  the  course  of  a 
long  prayer,  giving  the  entire  credit  of  the  victory  to  God,  he 
was  interrupted  by  Ethan  Allen,  who  called  out:  "Please  men- 
tion to  the  Lord  about  my  being  there." 

St.  John's  Church  at  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  is  one 
of  the  very  few  early  New  England  churches  which  was  of 
brick,  and  it  was  the  second  Episcopal  Church  in  New  England, 
the  first  being  King's  Chapel  in  Boston.  The  original  build- 
ing of  the  congregation  was  known  as  Queen's  Chapel,  after 
CaroHna  Wilhelmina,  wife  of  King  George  III,  who  presented 
to  the  congregation  a  prayer  book,  a  silver  communion  ser- 
vice, and  a  Bible,  the  latter  being  one  of  the  four  copies  of  the 
so-called  Vinegar  Bible.  In  1732  the  second  Queen's  Chapel 
was  built,  only  to  be  burned  in  1806,  when  the  present  building 
was  begun;  it  was  not  completed  until  about  1818.  When  the 
older  church  was  burned,  the  bell  fell  and  was  seriously  dam- 
aged, and  it  was  sent  to  Boston  and  recast  by  its  maker,  Paul 
Revere;  again,  in  1896,  it  was  recast,  this  time  by  the  succes- 
sors of  the  famous  Colonial  silversmith.  Some  of  the  church 
furnishings  of  St.  John's  are  of  interest:  the  credence  table  is 


132  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

made  from  wood  formerly  part  of  the  United  States  Frigate 
Hartford,  Admiral  Farragut's  famous  flagship,  and  the  bap- 
tismal fount  was  a  trophy  taken  by  Captain  Thomas  Mason 
from  the  French  when  Senegal  on  the  East  coast  of  Africa  was 
captured. 

Quite  different  in  type  is  the  Beneficent  Congregational 
Church  at  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  designed  by  an  architect 
named  John  Green  in  1807,  and  although  the  exterior  was  com- 
pletely rebuilt,  probably  about  1840,  with  a  result  which  can 
hardly  be  called  satisfactory,  the  lovely  interior  with  the 
superb  hghting  fixtures  has  been  thought  worth  including  in 
this  volume. 

The  well-known  Park  Street  Church  in  Boston  is  another 
church  which  shows  nothing  of  Asher  Benjamin's  influence; 
its  designer  was  Peter  Banner,  and  it  is  surprising  to  find  no 
other  building  attributed  to  him,  since  the  Park  Street  Church 
shows  evidences  of  considerable  originality  and  abihty.  It  is 
perhaps  the  most  impressive  of  all  the  old  Boston  Churches, 
both  by  reason  of  its  size  and  of  its  location  at  a  very  conspic- 
uous point  in  the  city,  somewhat  elevated  above  the  general 
level  of  the  surrounding  buildings. 

The  present  structure  was  built  in  1809,  and  shows  no  signs 
of  the  Classic  Revival  then  beginning  to  make  itself  felt,  but 
is  strongly  reminiscent  of  the  earlier  Colonial  work,  especially 
in  the  slimness  of  the  orders  and  the  hghtness  of  the  detail. 
In  spite  of  the  dehcacy  of  its  several  parts,  the  building  is  as  a 


T 


THE    OLD   MEETING    HOUSE,    LANCASTER,   MASS. 


INTERIOR,    THE    OLD    MEETING    HOUSE,    LANCASTER,    MASS. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  133 

whole  rather  clumsy  and  confused,  the  problem  of  dropping  the 
fagade  below  the  main  level  of  the  church  being  evidently 
too  much  for  the  designer.  One  cannot  feel  in  looking  at  the 
exterior  that  the  change  in  height  of  the  windows  has  been 
very  well  managed,  and  the  small  semi-circular  porches,  or 
whatever  they  may  be  called,  between  the  tower  and  the 
main  building,  though  well  designed  in  themselves,  and  being 
perhaps  an  experiment  worth  trying,  are  certainly  not  success- 
fully managed;  nor  is  the  connection  between  the  main  building 
and  the  tower  at  all  happy,  the  cornice  of  the  main  building 
cutting  squarely  across  the  lower  part  of  one  of  the  tower 
windows.  Nevertheless,  the  structure  is  architecturally  one 
of  the  most  interesting  of  our  early  churches,  because  its  archi- 
tect was  not  content  with  the  duplication  of  existing  success- 
ful buildings,  but  honestly  tried  to  solve  a  rather  difficult 
problem  instead  of  begging  the  question  by  treating  the 
building  as  if  it  were  on  one  level,  and  reaching  the  entrance 
by  steps. 

In  marked  contrast  with  the  exterior,  the  interior  is  very 
strongly  tinged  with  Greek  color,  but  only  half  understood 
and  distinctly  amateurish.  The  plan  is  admirable,  the  seating 
well  arranged,  and  the  treatment  of  the  rear  wall  agreeable 
because  of  its  simplicity. 

The  old  Meeting  House  at  Lancaster,  Massachusetts,  is  one 
of  the  few  surviving  church  structures  designed  by  the  greatest 
of  the  early  American  architects,  Charles  Bullfinch.     It  was 


134  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

erected  in  1810,  and  exhibits  some  of  the  influence  of  the 
Classic  Revival,  of  which  Bullfinch  was  the  greatest  of  our 
early  exponents.  The  history  of  Bullfinch  is  pretty  com- 
pletely known,  and  is  worth  transcribing  as  a  record  of  the 
architectural  training  of  the  day.  He  was  born  in  Boston  in 
1763,  graduated  from  Harvard  in  the  class  of  1781,  and  en- 
tered a  counting  house ;  but  the  business  of  the  town  was  para- 
lyzed by  the  w^ar,  and  Bullfinch  had  leisure  to  exhibit  a  marked 
interest  in  architecture,  reading  such  architectural  books  as  he 
could  obtain,  and  practising  by  making  minor  changes  in  his 
father's  and  neighbors'  houses,  but  he  did  no  serious  profes- 
sional work  until  after  his  return  from  abroad,  where  he  went 
in  1781,  remaining  for  a  year  or  two  in  England  and  on  the 
Continent.  He  returned  to  Boston  in  1786,  and  gradually 
became  a  regular  practitioner  of  architecture,  the  only  one 
then  in  Boston,  and  while  his  design  shows  evidences  of  his 
European  training,  especially  that  in  England,  the  lightness 
and  grace  of  his  detail  resembles  rather  the  earlier  Colonial 
work  than  that  of  the  Enghsh  successors  of  Wren,  whose  design 
was  not  conspicuous  for  its  taste  or  refinement.  He  was  a 
designer  of  several  of  the  early  American  churches  in  Boston, 
the  reconstruction  of  the  spire  of  what  is  known  as  Old  North, 
a  stone  church  at  Washington,  wooden  churches  at  Pittsfield, 
Taunton,  and  Weymouth,  as  well  as  the  brick  Meeting  House 
at  Lancaster.  He  also  designed  the  State  House  at  Boston, 
and  after  the  War  of  1812  was  appointed  architect  for  the  Capi- 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  135 

tol  at  Washington,  taking  charge  in  1817,  although  as  to  just 
how  far  he  followed  the  design  of  his  predecessors  is  not  known. 
Others  of  his  prominent  buildings  were  University  Hall  at 
Harvard,  which  is  an  extraordinarily  lovely  college  building; 
Boston  Market  in  Boston,  Massachusetts  General  Hospital, 
and  the  State  House.  But  with  all  these  buildings  he  has  done 
nothing  lovelier  than  the  pulpit  and  interior  of  the  Lancaster 
Meeting  House,  one  of  the  most  exquisite  pieces  of  design 
which  has  ever  been  executed. 

The  church  at  Lenox,  Massachusetts,  was  built  in  1805; 
it  was  possibly  copied  from  the  Bennington  Church  situated 
not  very  far  away,  or  taken  entirely  from  Asher  Benjamin's 
book,  or  possibly  designed  by  Isaac  Damon,  who  was  the 
architect  of  the  County  Court  House,  which  was  built  in 
Lancaster  in  the  same  year.  The  building  is  small,  simple, 
and  plain;  the  interior,  of  really  considerable  merit,  is  very 
greatly  injured  by  the  treatment  over  the  pulpit,  evidently 
not  a  part  of  the  original  scheme. 

The  first  settlement  in  Lenox  was  begun  in  1750,  but  be- 
cause of  their  fear  of  the  Indians,  five  years  later  most  of  the 
inhabitants  left  town,  returning  not  long  afterward.  In  1767 
the  town  was  incorporated,  and  in  1769  the  Congregational 
Church  was  organized.  Two  sites  were  designated  by  the 
town,  but  construction  being  delayed  for  various  reasons, 
neither  of  them  was  finally  chosen,  and  the  proprietors  in  1760 
voted  to  build  on  the  site  furnished  by  the  heirs  of  the  Rever- 


136  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

end  Peter  Reynolds,  who  came  to  Lenox  from  Somers,  Conn. 
He  was  one  of  seven  men  who  united  to  purchase  the  property 
of  an  "undesirable  citizen"  of  Stockbridge  and  who  were  com- 
pensated by  the  community  by  the  donation  of  four  thousand 
acres  of  uncleared  land,  comprising  the  present  site  of  the  town 
of  Lenox.  This  was  called  in  those  days  the  "Ministers* 
Grant,"  since  five  of  them  were  ministers,  and  it  was  part  of 
this  land,  about  three  acres  in  all,  which  was  offered  for  the 
church  and  was  finally  selected. 

The  first  meeting  house  was  begun  in  1770,  but  was  not  com- 
pleted until  five  years  later.  It  was  about  thirty-five  feet 
wide  and  forty-five  feet  long,  and  was  of  a  "suitable  height  for 
that  bigness"  —  whatever  that  might  be.  In  1880  the  town 
had  a  population  of  over  one  thousand,  and  feeling  that  the 
original  church  was  inadequate,  at  a  town  meeting,  in  1803, 
it  was  voted  that  certain  men  be  appointed  a  committee  to 
"digest  a  plan  relative  to  building  a  meeting  house."  The 
committee  determined  to  defray  the  expense  of  construction 
by  public  sale  of  the  pews,  and  to  erect  the  building  by  "the 
job  or  jobs  and  not  by  the  day,"  or,  as  we  would  express  it 
now,  the  building  was  to  be  erected  by  contract  and  not  by 
commission. 

At  the  town  meeting  it  was  voted  that  "the  body  of  the 
meeting  house  be  sixty-four  feet  long  and  fifty  feet  wide,  and  a 
projection  for  a  tower  of  eight  feet  by  twenty-six  feet."  Some 
tentative  plan  for  the  construction  must  certainly  have  been 


THE   FIRST    CHURCH,    LENOX,   MASS. 


INTERIOR,   THE    FIRST    CHURCH,    LENOX,    MASS. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  137 

in  existence,  since  the  dimensions  were  so  accurately  fixed; 
and  the  plan  submitted  by  the  committee  for  square  pews, 
forty-six  in  all,  was  also  accepted.  The  builder  was  Benjamin 
D.  Goodrich,  who  was  paid  $5,000  for  his  part  of  the  work,  the 
cost  of  furnishings,  bell,  etc.,  bringing  the  total  cost  up  to 
$6,619.  The  architect  is  not  named,  and  as  above  suggested, 
Isaac  Damon  may  have  been  responsible,  and  there  is  also 
some  question  as  to  whether  one  John  Hulett,  who  built  the 
meeting  houses  at  Lee  and  Richmond,  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Lenox,  was  not  chosen,  although  it  is  very  probable  that  the 
committee  itself  drew  up  some  sort  of  a  sketch  for  the  building 
which  followed  in  a  general  way  the  plans  of  the  two  meeting 
houses  built  by  Hulett,  which  closely  approximated  the  di- 
mensions of  the  one  at  Lenox.  The  first  alteration  in  the 
building  was  made  in  1840,  when  the  slip  pews  were  substituted 
for  the  old  square  ones,  and,  as  usual,  the  pulpit  and  the  front 
of  the  gallery  were  lowered  at  the  same  time. 

We  have  had  occasion  to  note  in  speaking  of  many  of  the  old 
churches  that  these  changes  were  made,  and  it  may  be  said 
that  this  change  was  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception,  so  a 
word  or  two  of  explanation  may  here  not  be  out  of  place. 

The  old  square  pews  were  usually  built  high  enough  so  that, 
when  seated,  the  occupants  could  not  see  their  neighbors 
over  them.  The  fronts  of  the  galleries  were  likewise  high 
enough  so  that  the  young  men  on  one  side  and  the  young  girls 
on  the  other  —  for  whom  the  side  galleries  were  respectively 


138  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

reserved  —  could  not  see  each  other;  therefore  the  pulpit  was 
elevated  until  it  was  high  enough  for  the  minister  to  be  in  sight 
of  the  entire  congregation.  This  invariably  necessitated  a 
long  flight  of  steps  up  to  the  pulpit,  the  floor  of  which  had  to 
be  placed  about  on  a  level  with  the  gallery,  and  when  the  old 
square  pews  were  altered  to  the  *'shp"  type,  the  pulpit  was 
lowered  to  save  the  preacher  the  awkwardness  and  undignity 
of  mounting  a  long  flight  of  steps  with  his  back  to  the  congre- 
gation. Sometimes  these  steps  led  up  to  both  sides  of  the 
pulpit,  and  sometimes  only  to  one  side,  but  as  the  pulpit  was 
usually  in  the  New  England  churches  placed  directly  against 
the  rear  wall  in  the  place  occupied  by  the  altar  in  the  Episcopal 
and  Catholic  churches,  they  were  necessarily  steep  and  awk- 
ward, and  while  the  new  lower  pulpits  were  not  as  a  rule  so 
well  designed  as  the  older  ones,  their  position  and  size  were 
infinitely  better. 

Stoves  were  introduced  in  the  building  before  1836,  for  in 
December  of  that  year  a  special  meeting  of  the  congregation 
was  called  to  decide  upon  changing  their  location,  since  in 
previous  years  more  than  ten  dollars  had  been  spent  for  fuel, 
and  even  then  the  church  was  not  warm.  The  present  heating 
apparatus  was  installed  about  1880.  The  beginnings  of  a 
choir  were  recognized  in  1850  by  setting  aside  certain  seats 
in  the  gallery  over  the  porch  for  those  who  assisted  in  singing, 
and  in  1853  a  committee  was  named  to  "investigate  the  sub- 
ject of  procuring  such  an  instrument  of  music  as  they  thought 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  139 

proper."  They  bought  for  $142  a  ''Seraphim"  —  presumably 
some  kind  of  an  organ,  and  not  an  angel. 

The  church  has  had  quite  an  uneventful  life,  and  the  history 
of  its  construction  has  been  gone  thus  minutely  into,  not  be- 
cause of  the  importance  of  the  building,  but  because  the 
minutes  of  the  church  have  been  more  carefully  preserved  than 
is  usually  the  case,  and,  as  in  all  probability  a  similar  process 
was  gone  through  when  most  of  the  early  Massachusetts 
churches  were  constructed,  it  has  seemed  wise  to  give  this  rather 
full  account  of  the  method  of  procedure,  to  illustrate  the  points 
of  resemblance  to  and  dissimilarity  from  those  now  current. 

Certain  other  things  are  learned  from  the  minutes  of  the 
town  and  of  the  Berkshire  Association  of  Ministers.  We 
learn  from  the  town  minutes  that  the  town  paid  the  cost  of  the 
upkeep  of  the  church  and  also  paid  for  the  bell  ringing,  etc., 
and  while  these  expenses  were  not  very  heavy,  being  $15  in 
1810,  and  $11.75  in  1812,  the  interesting  fact  is  that  the  town 
paid  them,  and  not  the  congregation.  In  1808  the  Berkshire 
Association  of  Ministers  voted  unanimously  to  have  the 
Scriptures  read  at  divine  service.  Previous  to  that  time  the 
reading  of  the  Scriptures  was  thought  to  be  an  empty  form 
savoring  of  Episcopal  worship,  which  was  of  course  anathema 
to  the  descendants  of  the  Puritans.  It  was  only  very  slowly 
that  the  New  England  churches  progressed  to  a  less  barren 
form  of  worship,  and  the  early  services  seem  to  have  consisted 
only  of  informal  and  lengthy  prayers,  the  singing  of  one  or  two 


140  EARLY  AMERICAN  CiroRCHES 

hymns,  and  an  extemporaneous  and  lengthy  sermon.  The 
text  was  sometimes  chosen  by  one  of  the  congregation  on  the 
spot  to  make  sure  that  the  minister  did  not  cheat  by  preparing 
his  sermon  in  advance !  Just  why  our  New  England  ancestors 
had  the  idea  that  ignorance  of  a  subject  would  promote  its 
religious  value  does  not  appear,  but  for  more  than  two  cen- 
turies the  minister  who  could  exhort  his  congregation  without 
preparation  was  the  man  in  demand,  and  any  symptom  of  a 
set  and  regular  procedure  was  regretted  by  the  congregations. 
Certain  elements  of  this  persist  to-day,  although  well-fixed 
portions  of  the  Episcopal  liturgy  have  gradually  come  to  have 
a  place  in  both  the  Presbyterian  and  Congregational  churches, 
as,  for  example,  the  responsive  reading  of  the  Psalms,  and  the 
Benediction.  The  collection  they  had  always  with  them,  al- 
though the  singing  of  the  Doxology  during  the  taking  of  the 
collection  is  a  rather  recent  innovation. 

The  First  Church  at  Springfield,  Massachusetts,  built  in 
1818,  was  certainly  designed  by  Isaac  Damon,  and  is  a  much 
more  elaborate  structure,  although  the  building  committee 
in  the  instructions  which  it  received  on  its  appointment  was 
required  to  procure  plans  for  a  church  "with  a  decent,  plain 
front."  Isaac  Damon  was  the  best  known  of  the  country 
architects  of  his  time;  he  is  reputed  to  have  studied  under 
Ithiel  Town,  and  probably  was  a  draughtsman  or  super- 
intendent for  him.  The  first  structure  which  he  designed 
independently  was  the  extremely  elaborate  church  building 


THE    FIRST    CHURCH,    SPRINGFIELD,    MASS. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  141 

at  Northampton,  Massachusetts,  which  was  burned  in  1878, 
and  at  the  time  that  he  was  called  from  Town's  office  in  New 
York  to  make  the  plans  and  direct  the  work  of  this  building 
he  was  only  twenty-eight  years  old.  This  was  in  1812,  and 
from  then  until  his  death  he  was  constantly  engaged  in  public 
or  semi-pubKc  work,  and  in  addition  to  designing  buildings 
he  acted  as  a  sort  of  overseer,  or  general  contractor,  without 
assuming  the  financial  responsibility  of  a  general  contractor 
He  was  an  excellent  draughtsman,  and  some  of  his  rendered 
elevations,  done  in  India,  ink,  are  the  best  old  American  draw- 
ings which  have  been  preserved.  Others  of  his  buildings  are  a 
church  in  Pittsfield,  the  Court  House  in  Pittsfield,  the  North 
Church  at  Ware,  and  a  number  of  bridges  across  the  Connec- 
ticut, Penobscot,  Hudson,  and  Ohio  rivers,  for  he  was  a  good 
engineer  as  well  as  an  excellent  architect,  and  was  reported 
to  have  been  the  originator  of  the  bowstring  truss. 

Springfield  was  settled  in  1636,  and  the  first  meeting  house 
was  built  in  1645;  it  was  forty  feet  long  and  twenty -five  feet 
wide,  and  lasted  only  until  1677,  when  the  second  building, 
sixty  feet  long  and  forty-six  feet  wide,  was  constructed;  the 
third  was  built  in  1752,  and  was  a  wooden  structure  of  fair  size, 
resembling  the  South  Church  in  Boston.  The  present  edifice 
has  stood  without  changes,  except  those  which  seem  to  have 
been  customary — namely,  of  lowering  the  pulpit  and  substi- 
tuting sHp  pews  for  square  pews;  the  organ  also  was  a  later 
introduction. 


142  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

The  church  at  Dorchester  is  hke  that  of  Lyme,  a  recon- 
struction of  the  original  building,  done  by  Messrs.  Everett  and 
Mead,  following  the  original  scheme,  which  was  the  fourth  at 
Dorchester,  and  was  probably  built  or  reconstructed  in  about 
1816,  the  information  at  hand  not  being  clear  on  this  point. 

The  frontispiece  of  this  volume  is  the  old  church  at  Ware, 
Massachusetts,  designed  by  Isaac  Damon,  and  is  perhaps  as 
nearly  typical  of  the  early  nineteenth  century  work  as  could 
be  found.  It  is  simple,  extremely  dignified,  ecclesiastical, 
and  yet  is  filled  with  the  truest  architectural  feeling  for  pro- 
portion and  detail,  and  while  it  is  small,  of  wood,  and  inex- 
pensive, it  is  nevertheless  one  of  the  loveliest  of  all  the  old 
churches. 

Very  similar  to  the  Ware  church  in  a  general  way  is  that  at 
Deerfield,  built  in  1824,  which  is,  however,  of  brick  for  the 
lower  part,  with  the  tower  and  roof  of  wood.  The  architect 
is  not  known,  but  was  not  improbably  Isaac  Damon  again; 
it  is  certainly  very  similar  to  his  work.  The  congregation  is 
an  old  one,  the  original  meeting  house  having  been  built  before 
1675,  and  the  present  is  the  third  of  the  structures  erected  on 
the  same  site.  It  is  said  that  some  of  the  interior  work  of  the 
present  building  was  removed  from  its  predecessor,  but  the 
only  accessory  of  the  present  building  which  is  definitely 
known  to  have  been  part  of  the  older  structure  is  the  weather- 
cock, which  was  bought  by  the  congregation  in  1757  for  £20. 

This  concludes  the  list  of  New  England  churches  which  the 


THE    MEETING    HOUSE,    DEERFIELD,    MASS. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  143 

writer  has  thought  it  necessary  to  illustrate  or  describe,  and  it 
will  be  found  that  there  is  no  one  of  these  buildings  which  does 
not  possess  much  that  is  picturesque  or  lovely,  and  that  each 
of  them  has  had  some  importance  during  the  history  of  the 
country,  or  in  the  development  of  its  architecture. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

NINETEENTH   CENTURY  CHURCHES   IN   THE   SOUTH 

BY  comparisson    with  New  England,  the  early  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century  in  the  Southern  States  show 
a  dearth  of  interesting  structures.     The  causes  of  this 
were  economic,  not  religious,  and  had  their  basis  on  the  same 
ground  that  was  the  cause  of  so  many  other  contrasts  between 
the  Northern  and  Southern  States  —  slavery. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  Revolutionary  War  emigration 
from  Europe  to  the  South  practically  terminated;  the  land 
had  been  pretty  well  taken  up  in  large  grants;  there  were 
few  manufactories  of  any  sort,  and  poor  men  could  not  afford 
to  enter  into  agricultural  competition  against  the  men  whose 
land  was  tilled  by  slaves  whose  labor  cost  them  nothing. 
Besides  checking  the  flow  of  immigration,  slavery  was  indirectly 
the  cause  of  another  condition  which  tended  to  check  church 
building.  The  distinctions  between  the  wealthy  and  the  poor 
constantly  became  sharper  and  more  distinct;  as  is  always  the 
case,  the  natural  increase  of  the  wealthy  class  was  much  less 
than  that  of  the  poorer,  and  the  eighteenth  century  churches 
remained  adequate  to  house  the  wealthier  parts  of  their  con- 
gregations and  tended  to  segregate  themselves  from  the  poorer 
whose  church  structures  were  plain,  cheap,  and  bare.     Again, 

144 


THE    INDEPENDENT    PRESBYTERIAN    CHURCH,    SAVANNAH,    GEORGIA 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  145 

as  the  South,  because  of  the  lack  of  free  labor,  became  more 
and  more  an  agricultural  country,  the  growth  of  the  cities 
was  checked,  and  it  is  always  in  the  cities  that  the  most 
money  is  spent  on  churches,  so  that  the  four  churches  of  the 
early  nineteenth  century  illustrated  in  this  chapter,  which 
comprise  about  the  only  early  nineteenth  century  churches 
of  size  and  architectural  merit  in  the  South,  were  all  of  them 
erected  in  city  districts,  and  one  of  these,  St.  Philip's,  was 
built  to  replace  an  old  church  destroyed  by  fire. 

The  earliest  of  the  four  is  the  Independent  Presbyterian 
Church  at  Savannah,  Georgia,  which  was  begun  in  1800,  pos- 
sibly from  the  designs  of  an  English  architect  named  Jay, 
although  this  is  not  certain.  We  are  accustomed  to  think  of 
Savannah  as  being  a  very  old  city,  but  it  was  only  settled  in 
1733,  and  for  many  years  its  growth  was  very  slow,  so  that 
the  interesting  old  houses  for  which  Savannah  is,  like  Charles- 
ton, noted,  were  most  of  them  erected  at  about  the  be- 
ginning of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  English  architect, 
Jay,  was  for  many  years  a  practitioner  in  Savannah,  designing 
not  only  a  number  of  the  best  of  the  houses,  but  also  the  Telfair 
Art  Gallery,  and  it  is  supposed  the  Independent  Presbyterian 
Church.  The  structure  illustrated  is  unfortunately  not  the 
original  one,  which  was  a  wooden  building  destroyed  by  fire 
some  years  since,  but  one  built  of  white  marble  from  measured 
drawings  of  the  old  work,  to  replace  it,  and  photographs  of  the 
old  and  new  buildings  are  hardly  distinguishable,  since  the 


146  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

proportions  of  the  wooden  structure  were  very  exactly  fol- 
lowed in  masonry.  The  spire  above  the  tower  is  of  wood,  and 
is  one  of  the  best  designed  of  all  the  old  church  spires,  both 
in  the  method  of  transition  from  the  square  to  the  octagonal, 
and  in  the  proportion  of  each  story.  The  window  treatment  is 
distinctly  not  of  the  usual  Colonial  type,  the  tracery  sug- 
gesting Gothic  motives,  a  method  of  sub-division  which  pos- 
sibly may  have  been  changed  from  the  original  designs.  Al- 
though the  building  appears  to  be  an  oblong,  it  is,  as  were 
many  of  the  older  churches,  square,  roofed  with  a  gable  roof, 
and  terminated  with  a  porch  and  tower.  The  interior  is 
covered  with  a  flat  dome,  supported  on  four  columns,  which 
also  carry  galleries.  The  church  is  the  most  famous  in  Georgia 
and  very  properly  so,  since  it  is  quite  the  handsomest  in  the 
city,  and  one  of  which  any  community  might  well  be  proud. 

The  Monumental  Church  in  Richmond,  Virginia,  is  in  de- 
sign unique  in  this  country,  and  resembles  rather  a  museum 
or  a  banking  structure  than  a  church.  It  was  built  in  1812, 
Robert  Mills  being  the  architect,  and  was  evidently  very 
strongly  influenced  by  the  Classic  movement  then  just  begin- 
ning, but  it  was  handled  with  such  freedom  and  vigor  that 
we  are  compelled  to  beheve  its  architect  to  have  been  a  great 
and  original  thinker.  The  treatment  of  the  columns  between 
piers  is  of  course  a  well-known  Greek  motif,  very  unusual  in 
early  American  work,  but  has  become  to-day  a  favorite 
method  of  treating  a  narrow  fagade,  since  the  corners  are 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  147 

admirably  strong  without  taking  up  a  great  deal  of  room.  The 
design  as  a  whole  is  one  of  the  earliest  in  which  the  work  of 
the  Greek  Revival  is  suggested,  but  the  columns  are  not  in 
the  least  Greek  in  proportion,  and  the  treatment  of  the  fagade 
is  rather  what  we  might  expect  in  the  most  advanced  modern 
work  instead  of  in  that  of  the  period  immediately  succeeding 
the  Colonial.  The  treatment  is  curiously  tentative;  its  de- 
signer evidently  recognized  the  beauty  of  the  Greek  order, 
but  hesitated  to  depart  from  the  tall,  slender  proportions  of  the 
Colonial  columns  toward  the  solid,  thick  Grecian  ones. 

There  are  many  cases  of  early  American  churches  in  which 
the  ceiling  was  formed  by  a  flat  dome,  but  this  is  one  of  the 
very  few,  and  perhaps  the  only  one,  in  which  it  is  suggested 
in  the  exterior  as  well,  and  where  it  seems  to  have  a  real  and 
logical  reason  for  its  existence.  It  is  perhaps  a  fault  in  most 
of  the  early  American  churches  that  their  designers  failed  to 
work  out  a  real  solution  of  ceiling  treatment;  certainly  vault- 
ing executed  in  plaster,  as  was  the  case  in  Christ  Church  in 
Boston,  and  in  Trinity  Church,  Newport,  and  domical  ceilings  in 
plaster,  such  as  were  used  in  the  Centre  Church  at  New  Haven, 
have  lost  their  true  significance  and  become  purely  decorative 
forms;  and  while  most  decorative  forms  have  been  evolved 
from  structural  ones,  such  a  ceiling  treatment  as  that  of  the 
Centre  Church,  where  the  dome  is  absolutely  unsupported  in 
effect,  and  in  reahty  is  hung  from  the  roof  beams,  is  hardly 
excusable.     Even  in  the  case  of  the  Monumental  Church,  the 


148  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

correspondence  between  the  interior  and  exterior  treatment  is 
in  a  measure  superficial,  since  the  domed  plaster  ceiling  of 
the  auditorium  is  clearly  within  the  lines  of  support,  and 
was  evidently  considered  as  a  ceiling  treatment,  and  not  as 
a  structural  feature.  The  octagonal  plan  also  is  a  marked 
departure  from  what  was  customary  at  that  early  period, 
and  in  principle  approached  more  nearly  the  auditorium  plans 
common  in  Baptist  and  Methodist  churches  to-day  than  either 
the  square  plan  of  the  early  New  England  churches  or  the 
long,  narrow  plan  of  the  English  and  Virginia  churches.  This 
has  resulted,  however,  in  an  interior  unique,  practical,  and 
attractive,  and  quite  as  well  suited  for  the  Episcopal  services 
as  the  traditional  one.  Some  part  of  the  many  curious  fea- 
tures of  its  design  is  perhaps  due  to  its  being  a  memorial 
church,  a  monument  (as  its  name  indicates)  erected  in  mem- 
ory of  seventy-two  people  who  were  killed  by  the  burning 
of  a  theatre  on  December  26,  1811,  and  the  urn  in  front 
of  the  portico  is  supposed  to  contain  the  ashes  of  some  of 
the  victims. 

St.  Paul's  Church  in  Augusta,  Georgia,  was  built  in  1819 
at  a  cost  of  $30,000;  the  architect's  name  has  been  forgotten, 
but  the  church  has  been  restored  and  remodelled  several  times 
since  its  erection,  and  the  interior  at  least  could  never  be 
recognized  by  the  designer.  The  first  settlement  at  Augusta 
was  a  trading  post  estabhshed  in  1676  by  order  of  General 
Oglethorpe,  and  the  town  at  this  time  was  laid  out  and  a  fort. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  149 

named  Fort  Augusta  in  honor  of  the  mother  of  George  III, 
was  built  on  a  bluff  overlooking  the  Savannah  River.  The 
first  church  at  Augusta  was  built  in  1750  on  a  site  which  would 
be  under  protection  of  the  guns  of  the  fort.  During  the 
Revolutionary  War  Fort  Augusta  was  three  times  taken  and 
retaken,  and  the  old  church  was  appropriated  first  by  the 
Continental  troops  as  a  barracks,  and  afterward  by  the 
English  for  other  mihtary  purposes.  During  the  siege  of  the 
fort  in  1781  by  the  Americans  under  Light  Horse  Harry  Lee 
the  churchyard  became  a  battlefield,  and  the  building  was 
practically  destroyed  by  an  American  cannon  mounted  on 
a  log  tower  nearby.  The  second  building  was  erected  in  1786, 
and  lasted  until  the  erection  of  the  present  structure.  While 
this  building  has  not  experienced  the  vicissitudes  of  war,  it 
has  suffered  very  severely  from  earthquakes,  which  destroyed 
a  great  part  of  the  interior  and  cracked  the  walls  of  the  building; 
and  to  forestall  any  danger  of  damage  from  possible  future 
earthquakes  the  ceiHng  was  made  of  wood  in  place  of  the 
original  plaster.  The  most  distinguished  of  its  pastors  was 
Bishop  Leonidas  Polk,  whose  name  is  more  famihar  to  us 
under  his  other  title,  Lieutenant  General  in  the  Army  of  the 
Confederate  States  of  America. 

For  more  than  fifty  years  after  its  foundation,  St.  Paul's 
Church  was  the  only  one  of  any  kind  in  Augusta.  Its  rectors 
were,  as  is  usual  with  Episcopal  churches  in  the  colonies,  sent 
out  by  the  English  church,  and  the  first  of  them,  the  Reverend 


150  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

Jonathan  Copp,  found  the  conditions  for  his  work  very  difficult. 
The  people  in  Augusta  lived  '*in  fear  of  their  lives"  both  be- 
cause of  the  neighborhood  of  Indians  and  because  **a  great 
concourse  of  absconding  debtors  had  taken  refuge  here,"  but, 
encouraged  by  the  better  class  of  people,  services  were  regularly 
held  in  the  parish  church,  and  missionary  services  were  even 
conducted  in  the  surrounding  country.  This  missionary  work 
was  continued  and  extended  by  the  third  rector,  the  Reverend 
Ellington,  who  was  said  to  have  been  seldom  home  except  on 
Sundays,  undertaking  journeys  of  more  than  one  hundred 
miles. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  Revolutionary  War  the  church  and 
the  glebe  of  three  hundred  acres  were  confiscated  by  the  state, 
because  the  rector  during  the  Revolution  was  a  Tory;  the 
glebe  was  given  to  the  Trustees  of  the  Richmond  Academy 
(who  were  also  trustees  of  the  town)  and  was  used  to  endow 
the  school.  As  the  old  church  had  been  destroyed  by  the 
Americans  during  the  war,  no  building  was  available  for  wor- 
ship until  the  new  owners  of  the  property  built  a  small  wooden 
structure  in  which  services  continued  to  be  held  by  Epis- 
copal clergymen  until  1804,  when  the  building  was  rented 
for  five  years  to  the  Presbyterians.  Earnest  efforts  being 
made  by  the  Episcopahans,  the  title  was  restored  to  them  by 
the  legislature  in  1818,  and  the  present  brick  building  was 
erected. 

The  churchyard  contains  many  interesting  monuments,  al- 


^fl^' 


EARLY   AMERICAN   CHURCHES  151 

though  the  oldest  were  destroyed  during  the  battles  of  1781. 
Among  those  buried  there  are  George  S.  Washington,  a  nephew 
of  General  Washington;  Commodore  Oliver  Bowen  of  the 
United  States  Navy;  William  Longstreet,  one  of  the  men  who 
invented  a  practicable  steamboat  prior  to  the  voyage  of  the 
Claremont,  and  others  of  lesser  reputation.  William  Thomp- 
son of  Pennsylvania,  an  officer  in  the  Continental  Army,  as 
well  as  a  great  number  of  the  soldiers,  both  Continental  and 
Royal,  who  perished  here  during  the  several  battles  of  the 
Revolutionary  War,  were  interred  in  the  cemetery,  the  graves 
being  marked  by  suitable  memorials. 

Of  all  the  Southern  churches,  that  about  which  the  most 
tradition  clusters  is  St.  Philip's  at  Charleston,  South  Carolina, 
fondly  called  by  the  people  of  Charleston  "The  Westminster 
of  South  Carolina,"  because  of  the  many  distinguished  men 
who  have  been  buried  in  the  churchyard  and  in  the  vaults 
under  the  church. 

The  charter  under  which  the  colony  was  founded  granted 
to  the  lords  proprietors  of  the  colony  the  patronage  of  all 
churches  and  chapels — that  is,  they  had  the  power  to  name  and 
appoint  ministers,  and  they  had  also  authority  to  build  and 
found  churches.  It  is  not  certainly  known  when  the  first 
building  at  Charleston  was  built,  but  there  was  no  church 
building  as  early  as  1682,  since  a  clerk  on  board  a  ship  which 
visited  Charleston  in  that  year  says:  "The  town  is  regularly 
laid  out  in  large  and  capacious  streets     ...     in  that  they 


152  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

have  reserved  therein  places  for  a  church,  town  house  and 
other  pubhc  structures."  The  site  reserved  for  the  church 
was  that  upon  which  now  stands  St.  Michael's,  but  on  it  was 
built  the  first  St.  Philip's  Church,  which  was  originally  known 
simply  as  "The  Church,"  or  "The  English  Church,"  the  word 
EngHsh  being  used  probably  because  there  were  a  number  of 
French  Huguenot  settlers  in  South  CaroHna.  The  second 
church  of  St.  Philip's  was  begun  in  1710,  and  was  a  large 
brick  building;  it  was  opened  for  worship  in  1723,  and  lasted 
until  it  was  burned  in  1835,  when  the  present  building  was 
built  from  designs  of  Mr.  J.  Hyde. 

As  was  the  case  in  Virginia,  South  CaroUna  suffered  from 
the  characters  of  some  of  its  early  ministers.  No  provision 
had  been  made  by  the  government  or  by  the  Church  of 
England  for  Episcopal  supervision  of  the  clergy  who  came 
out  to  America,  and  the  scandals  of  many  of  the  clergymen 
in  the  colonies  induced  the  Bishop  of  London  to  send  out 
commissaries  charged  with  the  general  administration  of  the 
church  and  the  supervision  of  the  clergy,  but  these  com- 
missaries seem  to  have  been  of  little  utiHty.  The  first  sent  to 
South  Carolina,  a  clergyman  named  Gideon  Johnson,  de- 
scribed the  people  to  whom  he  was  sent  as  "the  vilest  race 
of  men  on  earth,  with  neither  honor,  honesty,  nor  religion." 
The  congregation  of  St.  Philip's  was  in  the  main  free  from 
clergymen  of  evil  hfe,  although  the  first  incumbent,  a  man 
named  Marsden,   was  probably  not  an  ordained  minister. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  153 

but  simply  an  impostor,  and  he  was  turned  out  by  the  com- 
missary, the  Johnson  above  mentioned.  Johnson  soon  be- 
came himself  the  rector,  and  in  spite  of  his  early  opinion  of  the 
colonists  was  efficient  and  beloved.  As  we  have  already  noted 
with  regard  to  Virginia,  the  church  and  state  were  pretty 
nearly  a  single  organization,  and  the  vestry  of  St.  Philip's 
had  so  much  authority  that  a  number  of  the  inhabitants 
of  Charleston  petitioned  against  it.  This  petition  included 
the  signatures  of  many  of  the  Huguenots,  who  were  themselves 
governed  by  a  vestry  which  they  had  no  power  to  elect;  the 
petition  was  granted  and  the  vestry  was  reUeved  of  some  of 
its  power. 

The  proprietors  of  the  colonies  at  the  time  of  their  founda- 
tion endeavored  to  impose  upon  the  colonists  the  so-called 
Fundamental  Constitution,  which  included  the  following 
clause:  *'As  the  country  comes  to  be  sufficiently  planted  and 
distributed  into  fit  divisions,  it  shall  belong  to  the  Parliament 
to  take  care  for  the  building  of  churches  and  the  direct  main- 
tenance of  divines  to  be  employed  in  the  exercise  of  religion, 
according  to  the  Church  of  England,  which  being  the  only  true 
and  orthodox  and  the  national  religion  of  all  the  King's  domin- 
ions, is  so  also  of  Carohna;  therefore,  it  alone  shall  be  allowed 
to  receive  pubhc  maintenance  by  grant  of  Parliament." 

This  provision  was  quite  in  accord  with  the  practice  of  that 
early  day  in  the  Puritan  provinces  of  the  North  no  less  than 
in  the  Episcopal  provinces  of  the  South,  but  because  it  was 


154  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

never  assented  to  by  the  people  of  the  Carohnas  it  was  never 
constitutionally  in  force,  although  we  find  that  for  some  time 
the  people  of  the  provinces  accepted  acts  of  their  governors 
which  carried  out  this  provision  as  though  it  were  technically 
legal.  The  first  Governor  of  the  colony,  Sayle,  although  him- 
self reported  to  be  a  Puritan,  upheld  this  provision  and  wrote 
the  proprietors  asking  for  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land; and  in  a  later  letter  signed  by  him  and  six  others  jointly 
he  urges  the  want  of  an  able  minister  by  whose  means  "cor- 
rupted youth  might  be  reclaimed  and  the  people  instructed." 

The  first  minister  in  the  province  was  perhaps  the  Reverend 
Mr.  "Williamson  in  the  settlement  at  Charles  Town,  although 
this  was  not  the  first  settlement  in  the  Carolinas,  the  original 
one  having  been  at  Old  Town  on  the  Ashley  River,  but  it  does 
not  appear  that  there  was  any  church  built  in  that  town.  The 
exact  date  of  the  arrival  of  the  Reverend  Mr.  Williamson  is 
not  known,  but  it  was  prior  to  1681,  since  he  is  mentioned  as 
having  performed  a  marriage  at  that  time.  He  was  probably 
not  known  as  rector  of  St.  Philip's,  for  we  find  no  record  of  any 
provision  having  been  made  for  his  support,  nor  was  there  any 
church  building  erected  so  early;  what  official  position  he 
held  is  therefore  doubtful.  The  support  of  the  minister  for 
St.  Phillip's  Church  was  first  provided  for  in  1698,  during  the 
incumbency  of  the  Reverend  Samuel  Marshall,  who,  we  learn 
from  the  act,  had  "left  a  considerable  benefice  and  honorable 
way  of  living  in  England  to  come  out  to  Carolina      .     .     . 


ST.    PHILIP  S    CHURCH,    CHARLESTON,    S.    C. 


r 


^ 
^ 


EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES  155 

out  of  the  zeal  he  had  for  the  propagation  of  the  Christian 
rehgion,  and  particularly  of  the  Church  of  England."  The 
act  provided  that  he  should  enjoy  all  of  the  lands,  houses, 
negroes,  cattle,  and  moneys  appointed  for  the  use,  benefit,  and 
behoof  of  the  minister  of  Charles  Town,  and  specifically  ap- 
propriated forever.  It  also  directed  that  a  negro  man  and  a 
negro  woman  and  four  cows  and  calves  should  be  purchased 
for  his  use  and  paid  for  out  of  the  pubHc  funds. 

The  first  vestry  of  the  church  included,  besides  men  of 
English  descent,  three  Huguenots  —  Colonel  Prioleau  and 
two  others  —  all  of  whom  subscribed  to  the  test  as  it  was  called ; 
in  other  words,  agreed  to  the  fundamental  provisions  of  the 
doctrines  of  the  Church  of  England,  especially  as  regarded 
the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation.  This  vestry  exercised  con- 
siderable governmental  authority,  relieving  the  poor,  col- 
lecting fines,  and  paying  out  funds  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  poor.  We  find  that  they  collected  fines  from  a  man  who 
swore  without  a  book;  from  a  man  who  knocked  down  Mr. 
Pinckney's  negro;  from  a  man  who  retailed  rum  on  Sunday; 
from  others  who  walked  about  the  streets  on  Sunday  during 
divine  service,  and  from  other  white  men  who  knocked  down 
or  abused  negroes.  Quite  large  sums  were  imposed  for  this 
latter  offence,  £2  being  the  average,  while  the  rumseller  was 
fined  only  10  shilhngs. 

This  vestry  also  secured  an  appropriation  or  grant  of  public 
land  in  Charles  Town  from  the  assembly  of  the  state,  for  the 


156  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

erection  of  a  workhouse  and  hospital,  with  authority  to  erect 
buildings  for  these  purposes  on  it  at  their  own  expense;  and 
such  a  hospital  was  built  and  carried  on  as  St.  Philip's  Hos- 
pital, being  of  especial  service  during  the  yellow  fever  epi- 
demics which  several  times  occurred  during  the  years  prior 
to  the  Revolution.  Besides  these  activities,  they  also  con- 
ducted a  school,  which  was  at  least  in  part  a  free  school  for 
whites,  as  well  as  a  school  for  Indians  and  negroes  described 
below. 

An  interesting  advertisement  by  one  of  the  commissaries 
of  the  state  appeared  in  the  South  Carolina  Gazette  on  March 
11, 1743.  It  stated  that  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel,  having  at  heart  the  education  of  the  negroes  and 
Indian  races,  had  resolved  on  the  following  method  of  pur- 
suing that  end:  to  purchase  some  country  born  negroes  and 
cause  them  to  be  instructed  to  read  the  Bible,  and  in  the  chief 
precepts  of  the  Christian  rehgion,  and  thenceforth  emploj^ 
them  as  schoolmasters  for  the  same  instruction  of  all  negro 
and  Indian  children  born  in  the  colonies.  The  advertise- 
ment proceeds  to  state  that  the  Society  had  purchased  about 
fifteen  months  previously  two  suitable  negroes  and  assigned 
one  of  them  to  Charleston,  who  would  be  sufficiently  qualified 
in  a  few  months,  and  the  advertisement  concludes  with  an 
appeal  for  a  contribution  of  £400  to  complete  the  school- 
house.  The  school  was  actually  built  and  continued  in  use 
for  about  twenty  years,  when  one  of  the  teachers  died,  and 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  157 

the  other  "turned  out  profligate,"  and  as  the  Society  made  no 
further  investments  in  this  educational  commodity  the  school 
was  discontinued. 

As  was  noted  when  writing  of  St.  Michael's,  this  church  was 
founded  by  St.  Philip's  because  the  congregation  had  become 
too  large,  and  St.  Michael's  was  continued  as  a  chapel  of 
St.  Philip's  until  1797,  when  the  churches  were  formally  sepa- 
rated, and  the  land  which  belonged  to  both  divided. 

The  extent  of  governmental  authority  in  church  affairs 
appears  from  the  fact  that  the  second  St.  Philip's  Church 
was  ordered  to  be  erected  by  an  act  of  the  Assembly  in  1710, 
and  a  second  act  of  the  Assembly  in  1720  was  passed  to  hasten 
its  construction.  This  second  church  is  mentioned  with  some 
particularity  because  while  the  present  church  was  not  an 
exact  duplicate  of  the  older  one,  it  resembles  it  to  a  very  large 
extent.  In  1766  the  second  building  was  written  of  as  follows: 
'*  This  church  is  allowed  to  be  the  most  elegant  religious  edifice 
in  British  America.  It  is  built  of  brick;  length  one  hundred 
feet,  breadth  sixty  feet,  height  forty  feet,  with  a  cupola  of  fifty 
feet  with  two  bells  and  a  clock  and  a  bell.  It  has  three  por- 
ticos before  the  West,  South,  and  North  doors.  It  is  built 
from  the  model  of  the  Jesuit  Church  at  Antwerp,  having  gal- 
leries around,  exceeding  well  planned  for  sight  and  hearing." 
This  description  is  sufficiently  exact  to  indicate  the  more 
than  general  resemblance  between  the  two  edifices. 

Charleston  has  been  repeatedly  devastated  by  fires,  con- 


158  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

flagrations  of  considerable  size  having  occurred  in  1740,  1778, 
1796,  and  1810,  and  finally  in  the  great  fire  of  1835  St.  Phihp's 
was  destroyed.  The  cornerstone  of  the  new  building  was 
laid  on  November  12th  of  the  same  year.  It  was  built  of 
brick  on  the  old  foundations,  except  that  the  eastward  or 
chancel  end  was  extended  something  over  twenty  feet.  The 
main  changes  from  the  old  building  are  that  it  was  raised 
about  three  steps  from  the  ground,  where  the  other  was  flush, 
and  where  the  tower  of  the  older  building  terminated  with  a 
cupola,  this  is  concluded  with  a  spire  two  hundred  feet  high, 
designed  by  Edward  B.  White.  It  is  of  interest  to  note  that 
the  celebrated  evangeUst,  George  Whitefield,  after  preaching 
in  the  Middle  States  and  New  England,  was  tried  for  heresy 
in  this  church.  Among  the  men  of  distinction  who  are  buried 
in  the  churchyard  of  St.  Philip's,  or  to  whom  monuments  are 
erected  in  the  church  itself,  are  General  AYilliam  Moultrie, 
Bishop  Gadsden,  John  C.  Calhoun,  William  Rhett,  Governors 
Daniel,  Johnson,  Lowndes,  and  Rutledge,  and  many  of  the 
chief  justices  of  the  colony,  and  other  state  officers;  General 
Thomas  Pinckney,  who  fought  in  the  wars  of  the  Revolution 
and  of  1812,  and  was  afterward  minister  to  England  and 
Spain;  Admiral  Shubrick  and  his  brothers,  a  number  of  the 
members  of  Congress,  and  many  of  the  soldiers  of  the  War 
of  the  Rebellion. 

It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  the  early  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  in  the  South  does  not  show  a  large  number 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  159 

of  ecclesiastical  monuments  of  interest;  the  proportion  of 
well-designed  churches  in  the  South  has  never  been  as  great 
as  that  in  the  Northern  and  Middle  States,  although  many  of 
them  were  among  the  most  interesting  and  beautiful  in  the 
United  States.  In  thinking  back  over  the  Hst  of  churches  in 
the  Southern  States,  we  find  the  earliest  of  all,  St.  Luke's  at 
Smithfield,  to  be  extremely  well  designed,  of  durable  materials, 
and  intrinsically  as  well  as  historically  interesting.  The 
Bruton  Parish  Church  has  a  quaint  charm  possessed  by  few 
other  buildings  of  its  time;  St.  Michael's  and  St.  Philip's  in 
Charleston  are  of  unusual  high  quality  of  design,  and  of  a 
type  which  can  only  be  compared  to  some  of  the  English 
buildings;  the  Monumental  Church  at  Richmond  deserves 
to  be  a  forerunner  of  an  epoch  of  design,  and  with  such  examples 
as  these  before  it,  the  decadence  into  which  architecture  fell 
in  the  South,  and  from  which  it  is  just  beginning  to  emerge,  is 
the  more  lamentable  because  of  the  unusual  excellence  of  the 
earlier  work. 


CHAPTER  IX 

NINETEENTH    CENTURY    CHURCHES    IN    THE    MIDDLE    STATES 

THE  churches  in  the  Middle  States  during  the  early- 
nineteenth  century,  like  those  of  the  South,  fall  behind 
the  standard  previously  established  in  that  part  of  the 
country,  and  also  are  less  interesting  than  the  work  in  New 
England  of  the  same  period.  It  was  in  the  Middle  States 
that  the  successive  styles  of  design  which  disfigured  the  archi- 
tecture of  the  nineteenth  century  earliest  became  prevalent, 
and  succeeding  the  lovely  early  Colonial  architecture,  the 
buildings  were  designed  in  the  style  of  the  Greek  Revival, 
that  of  the  bastard  Italian  Renaissance,  the  Strawberry  Hill 
Gothic,  and  the  monstrous  Queen  Anne.  The  dearth  of  good 
material  to  illustrate  is  not  caused  by  the  paucity  of  new 
buildings,  but  by  the  poor  quahty  of  the  design  of  most  of 
them,  although  we  find  a  few  examples  of  the  most  excellent 
Gothic  architecture,  due  largely  to  the  influence  of  Upjohn, 
at  a  time  when  the  rest  of  the  United  States  was  continuing  to 
experiment  with  some  of  the  many  varieties  of  Classic. 

We  have  then  remaining  in  various  parts  of  the  Middle 
States,  and  especially  in  the  neighborhood  of  New  York,  a 
comparatively  large  number  of  churches  which  were  built 
during  the  early  nineteenth  century,  and  which  do  not  fall 

160 


THE    NORTH    REFORMED    CHURCH,    SCHRAALENBURG,    N.    J. 


EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES  161 

within  the  scope  of  this  work  because,  while  historically  they 
may  house  old  congregations,  architecturally  they  are  far  dif- 
ferent from  the  Colonial  buildings  in  style.  It  is  unnecessary 
to  point  to  specific  examples,  but  it  may  in  general  be  said  that 
the  earliest  churches  of  the  Gothic  revival  in  the  United  States, 
with  the  exception  of  Trinity  Church  in  New  Haven,  were  built 
in  the  neighborhood  of  New  York,  and  it  is  quite  astonishing 
to  find  so  thorough  a  comprehension  of  the  motives  and  prin- 
ciples of  Gothic  construction  as  are  displayed  in  Trinity 
Church  in  New  York  following  immediately  upon  the  heels  of 
the  Greek  Revival.  In  fact,  the  earlier  of  the  Gothic  churches 
in  New  York  were  probably  the  best  which  were  built  until 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  because  of  the  potent 
influence  of  Mr.  Upjohn,  one  of  the  most  distinguished  Ameri- 
can architects  who  worked  in  the  Gothic  style. 

It  is  also  rather  an  interesting  fact  that  in  the  Middle  States 
the  Greek  Revival  has  left  us  few  surviving  examples  by  com- 
parison with  New  England  or  even  the  South.  In  New  Eng- 
land the  Greek  Revival  took  early  root  and  long  persisted,  so 
that  certain  New  England  churches,  built  as  late  as  1850,  were 
designed  in  a  type  precisely  similar  to  that  which  began  to 
manifest  itself  in  1815,  and  many  of  the  so-called  old  Colonial 
churches  of  New  England  are  really  not  early  American 
churches  at  all,  but  date  from  this  Greek  Revival  period.  In 
New  York  City  the  Greek  Revival  seems  to  have  had  quite  as 
much  influence  upon  residences  as  it  did  in  New  England, 


162  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

but  there  are  few  if  any  churches  of  the  period  remaining  in 
New  York  City,  and  very  few  elsewhere  in  the  Middle  States, 
except  in  the  counties  of  New  York  east  of  the  Hudson  River, 
which  geographically,  if  not  administratively,  form  part  of 
New  England.  However,  as  late  as  1830  certain  churches 
were  built  in  which  the  traditions  of  the  early  American  art 
was  still  the  dominant  factor,  even  though  the  mouldings  and 
decorative  ornament  used  on  them  were  Greek  rather  than 
Colonial,  and  one  or  two  of  these  have  been  included  in  this 
chapter  as  instances  of  the  last  efforts  of  a  dying  art.  Of 
course,  in  each  of  these  cases  there  was  some  particular  reason 
for  the  old  traditions  having  been  followed;  they  were  either 
built  in  districts  comparatively  remote  from  the  centres  of 
population,  or  else  they  were  copies  of  some  earlier  church 
fancied  by  an  important  member  of  the  congregation.  The 
church  at  Tappan,  described  later  in  this  chapter,  seems  to  be 
one  in  which  both  causes  were  operative.  Tappan  is,  of 
course,  a  very  short  distance  from  New  York  City,  and  was 
near  the  main  artery  of  travel  in  those  days  —  the  Hudson 
River  —  but  it  was  then,  nevertheless,  and  still  remains  to- 
day, a  secluded  backwater  in  the  current  of  progress,  and,  with 
the  other  Dutch  communities  in  Bergen  County,  New  Jersey, 
was  solely  the  centre  of  a  farming  district.  Farmers  have 
always  been  notable  conservatives,  which  doubtless  explains 
their  slowness  to  adopt  new  motives.  In  fact  the  whole  of 
Bergen  County  was  for  many  years  curiously  isolated  from 


TRINITY    CHURCH,    NEWARK,    N.    J. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  163 

the  path  of  progress;  no  principal  highways  passed  through  its 
boundaries,  since  there  were  no  great  cities  which  had  to  be 
reached  by  traversing  it,  and  while  one  of  the  most  fertile  and 
easily  cultivated  of  all  the  districts  near  New  York,  it  was  so 
devastated  and  desolated  during  the  Revolutionary  War  that 
its  recovery  of  prosperity  was  very  slow,  and  the  very  many 
churches  which  were  built  within  it  during  the  years  succeeding 
the  Revolution,  to  replace  those  burned  or  destroyed  during  the 
war,  were  in  most  cases  small  and  plain,  although  substantial, 
structures  of  stone,  erected  by  local  builders. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  county  to-day  in  most  cases  fail  to 
remember  the  events  of  the  war  in  which  their  forefathers 
suffered  as  did  the  inhabitants  of  no  other  part  of  the  United 
States  with  the  exception  of  Westchester  County.  No  great 
battle,  it  is  true,  took  place  in  Bergen  County,  but  it  was  several 
times  traversed  by  both  the  Colonial  and  British  armies,  with 
all  the  destruction  of  property  which  such  an  event  entails, 
and,  being  a  farming  country  accessible  to  New  York,  it  was 
foraged  over  and  over  again  by  the  British  troops,  and  much 
of  the  crops  were  destroyed  by  the  Colonials  to  prevent  them 
from  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  British.  Partisan  bands 
calling  themselves  British  or  Continental,  as  suited  their  con- 
venience, burned  and  pillaged  without  mercy,  and  the  county 
was  at  the  end  of  the  war  left  in  a  condition  of  utter  prostra- 
tion almost  inconceivable. 

For  seven  years  the  British  troops  held  New  York,  and  dur- 


164  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

ing  that  time  not  a  month,  perhaps  hardly  a  week,  elapsed 
without  some  act  of  wanton  destruction  being  wrought  within 
the  boundaries  of  the  county,  and  when  at  the  evacuation  of 
New  York  by  the  British  troops  the  remainder  of  the  scat- 
tered inhabitants  were  enabled  to  settle  down  in  peace  to  build 
up  their  homes  and  communities,  they  were  without  means 
and  without  credit.  The  churches  that  they  built  then,  after 
the  conclusion  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  were  such  as  they 
could  construct  with  their  own  labor  —  the  only  thing  they 
had  left — and  the  many  little  churches  which  were  erected  in 
the  county  were  of  local  materials  and  local  handiwork  exclu- 
sively. Bergen  County  had  its  fields  covered  with  red  sand- 
stone boulders,  said  by  geologists  to  have  been  left  there  by 
glacial  drift,  and  as  the  first  necessity  in  a  farming  country  is 
to  clear  the  fields,  these  stones  were  piled  up  for  walls  or  used 
for  dwellings.  The  stone  was  easily  worked,  durable,  and 
excellent  in  color,  so  that  it  became  the  natural  material  for 
the  early  farm  buildings  and  churches  of  the  county,  and,  as 
was  said  before  in  speaking  of  the  church  at  Hackensack,  almost 
all  of  the  early  churches,  including  that  at  Schraalenburg, 
which  were  assisted  by  the  Hackensack  Church  or  were  founded 
by  some  members  of  it,  were  built  of  this  material,  the  stones 
being  neatly  squared  and  the  principal  fagades  at  least  well- 
faced.  Lime  being  scarce  and  expensive,  the  walls  were  laid 
up  in  clay  instead  of  mortar,  and  pointed  up  with  Hme  on  the 
outside  to  make  them  weatherproof.    The  stone  was  either 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  165 

not  big  enough  to  cut  for  lintels  or  perhaps  the  difficulty  of 
cutting  and  handling  stone  large  enough  for  lintels  prevented 
their  use.  At  any  rate,  the  openings  were  arched,  usually  with 
a  pointed  arch,  and  the  jambs  and  arches  of  the  windows  were 
often  built  of  brick  bonded  into  the  stonework  of  the  wall, 
because  of  the  ease  with  which  brick  arches  could  be  formed. 
The  towers  were  of  stone  surmounted  either  with  a  wooden 
spire  or  with  a  small  wooden  belfry,  and  while  all  of  the  mould- 
ings and  ornaments  of  the  Dutch  work  are  of  a  type  somewhat 
different  from  that  of  the  Colonial  work,  in  the  churches  es- 
pecially was  the  difference  strongly  marked,  although  the  later 
churches  resemble  more  clearly  the  Colonial  of  the  other  parts 
of  the  country  than  did  the  earlier  ones. 

So  similar  are  these  buildings,  scattered  over  an  area  of 
about  a  hundred  and  fifty  square  miles  of  New  Jersey,  that  a 
single  example  has  been  thought  sufficient  to  illustrate  them 
all,  and  since  none  of  them  possessed  an  historical  importance 
sufficient  to  differentiate  it  from  the  others,  the  one  chosen  was 
selected  merely  because  of  its  size,  preservation,  and  general 
typical  appearance. 

The  First  Reformed  Church  at  Schraalenburg,  New  Jersey, 
which  was  built  in  1801,  is  very  similar  to  the  church  at 
Hackensack,  although  it  is  somewhat  larger  and  shghtly  better 
in  detail. 

Trinity  Church  in  Newark  was  built  four  years  later,  and 
while  the  body  of  the  church  resembles  very  closely  the  typical 


166  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

New  Jersey  stone  church  as  exemphfied  by  the  Schraalenburg 
Church,  the  First  Presbyterian  Church  at  Newark,  and  others 
illustrated  in  this  volume,  it  is  distinguished  from  them  by 
an  excellent  portico  and  a  very  well  designed  tower.  It  is 
evidently  an  expression  of  the  local  architecture  as  influenced 
by  the  Episcopal  churches  in  New  York,  and  while  the  in- 
terior is  not  at  all  attractive,  the  exterior  is  surprisingly  good, 
and  one  feels  not  at  all  disturbed  at  the  variance  of  styles  in 
the  different  parts  of  the  building.  Like  the  older  churches 
of  the  type,  the  windows  have  pointed  heads  and  pseudo- 
Gothic  tracery  of  wood,  a  Classic  cornice,  and  a  Classic  tower. 
The  columns  are  light  and  excellent,  made  of  cut  brownstone; 
the  body  of  the  building  and  the  tower  of  random  ashlar; 
the  spire  and  cornice  of  course  being  wood. 

At  the  time  of  this  writing  it  seems  to  be  unhappily  hkely 
that  the  youngest  of  the  three  old  sister  churches  still  existing 
in  New  York — St.  John's  in  Varick  Street — will  be  destroyed. 
The  indifference  of  the  vestry  of  Trinity  Church  to  the  value 
of  preserving  an  architectural  monument  of  this  character  has 
been  equalled  only  by  that  of  the  government  of  the  city,  and 
while  both  apparently  feel  in  a  half  contemptuous  way  that  it 
would  be  "nice"  to  preserve  the  building,  they  can  see  no 
very  good  reason  why  it  should  not  be  destroyed,  rather  than 
to  pay  the  few  thousand  dollars  necessary  for  its  preservation. 
The  church  has,  it  is  true,  no  very  great  historical  importance; 
it  was  constructed  in  1807  after  designs  by  John  McComb, 


ST.    JOHN  S    CHAPEL,    VARICK    STREET,    NEW   YORK    CITY 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  167 

the  putative  architect  of  the  New  York  City  Hall.  It  was  built 
as  a  chapel  of  Trinity  Church  (and  still  remains  so)  to  take 
care  of  what  was  then  a  fashionable  residential  district  sur- 
rounding a  private  square,  known  as  St.  John's  Park,  which 
was  eventually  sold  to  the  New  York  Central  Railroad,  and 
has  been  for  many  years  occupied  by  it  as  a  freight  ter- 
minal. The  building  is  architecturally  not  quite  so  interesting 
as  St.  Paul's,  though  rather  better  than  St.  Mark's,  and  the 
narrow  and  crowded  lot  on  which  it  stands,  surrounded  by 
tall  ojffice  buildings,  does  not  improve  its  appearance,  and 
makes  it  almost  impossible  to  photograph  even  as  well  as  the 
poor  illustration  shown  in  this  chapter.  The  tower  is  exceed- 
ingly tall,  and  rather  heavy  toward  the  top,  but  the  porch  is 
excellently  designed,  and  the  interior  is  extremely  lovely. 
There  have  been  fortunately  no  changes  made  in  it,  because 
the  district  has  now  become  unfashionable,  and  it  was  not 
thought  worth  while  to  spend  much  money  to  house  the  small 
congregation  remaining.  Trinity  Church  has  never  found  it 
difficult  to  support  chapels  in  fashionable  districts,  nor  to  keep 
open  meeting  rooms  in  poorer  ones,  and  the  foohshly  indiffer- 
ent policy  which  may  permit  this  lovely  and  interesting  histor- 
ical monument  to  be  destroyed  is  all  but  incomprehensible  to 
the  architect  who  regards  good  design  of  a  building  in  much  the 
same  hght  that  he  does  good  painting  in  a  picture  —  but  it  has 
no  commercial  value. 

The  First  Reformed  Church  at  New  Brunswick,  which  was 


168  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

built  in  1812,  is  somewhat  dissimilar  from  the  earHer  Dutch 
churches  in  that  it  has  its  gallery  expressed  in  the  exterior 
by  two  separate  tiers  of  windows,  circular  headed,  and  the 
square  stone  tower  is  surmounted  by  a  stepped  wooden  tower, 
also  square,  rather  agreeable  in  spite  of  the  monotonous 
repetition  of  motives  in  its  three  stages.  It  is  perhaps  the 
best  in  detail  of  all  the  Dutch  Reformed  churches,  although,  as 
has  been  said  before,  the  churches  of  New  Jersey  are  com- 
paratively dull  and  uninteresting,  the  serious  efforts  of  a 
cheerful  people.  The  congregation  at  New  Brunswick  was 
founded  in  1703  as  the  Three  Mile  Run  congregation,  and  was 
organized  in  its  present  form  in  April,  1717,  when  the  first 
church  was  built.  Needless  to  add,  it  was  in  this  earlier  edifice 
that  George  Washington  worshipped,  and  not  in  the  present 
one,  as  is  averred  by  tradition. 

The  Moravian  Church  at  Bethlehem,  Pennsylvania,  was 
built  in  1805,  but  is  architecturally  not  worth  illustrating. 
It  is  in  a  general  way  similar  to  the  Home  Moravian  Church 
at  Winston-Salem,  North  Carolina,  and  it  is  interesting  to 
note  that  these  two  churches,  built  by  settlers  of  common 
ancestry  in  widely  removed  localities,  were  influenced  as 
to  design,  not  by  the  work  around  them,  but  by  that  of  their 
home  country.  The  settlement  at  Bethlehem  was  founded 
in  1740  by  Count  Zinzendorf  (who  was  a  Bishop  of  the 
Moravian  Church,  although  a  Lutheran)  as  a  missionary  set- 
tlement, and  the  community  soon  became  famous  for  the  ex- 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  169 

cellence  of  its  hospital.  There  Lafayette  went  to  be  nursed 
for  a  wound  received  in  the  Revolutionary  War;  and  it  was 
among  the  Moravians  that  Count  Pulaski  recruited  a  troop  of 
horses  for  the  Continental  service,  in  spite  of  the  pacific  nature 
of  the  community.  The  settlement  is  more  picturesque  than 
the  church,  which  is  a  large,  badly  shaped,  two-story,  barnhke 
structure  of  red  brick  with  a  small  circular  shaped  cupola. 

It  is  extraordinary  to  find  a  building  so  completely  Colonial 
in  feehng  erected  as  late  as  1835,  but  the  church  at  Tappan 
is  quite  similar  in  many  respects  to  any  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury buildings,  although  the  Colonial  type  was  at  the  end 
of  the  first  third  of  the  nineteenth  century  practically  extinct. 
It  is  probable  that  this  was  due  to  the  fact  that  it  was  copied 
very  closely  from  the  Cedar  Street  Presbyterian  Church  in 
New  York  City,  long  since  destroyed,  and  that  no  architect 
was  employed,  the  drawings  having  been  made  by  John 
Haring,  a  carpenter-architect,  and  William  Ackerman,  the 
mason,  both  local  men,  whose  descendants  are  still  hving 
in  Tappan.  The  town  is  an  old  one  as  towns  go  in  America, 
the  first  settlement  there  having  been  made  in  1640  by  Cap- 
tain David  Petersen  de  Vries,  who  bought  five  hundred  acres 
of  land,  practically  the  whole  present  town  of  Tappan,  from 
the  Indians  on  April  15th  of  that  year.  He  called  the  place 
Vriesendaal,  and  gathering  together  some  settlers  started  a 
little  town  there,  but  the  Indians,  believing  in  the  principles 
of  referendum  and  recall,  exercised  these  principles  in  1643  by 


170  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

driving  the  settlers  out  (unharmed),  and  it  was  not  until  more 
than  twenty  years  afterward  that  a  permanent   settlement 
was  made.      The  first  church  edifice  was  built  in  1716  and 
enlarged  in  1778,  and,  after  being  injured  by  fire,  the  present 
building  was  erected  in  1835.     Some  attempt  was  made  appar- 
ently by  the  congregation  to  repair  the  old  building  enough 
to  use  it,  which  did  not  please  the  pastor  at  all,  although  in 
most  cases  where  repairing  was  necessary  it  seems  to  have 
been  the  congregation  which  took  the  initiative.     A  very 
old  gentleman,  who  is  still  ahve,  remembers  at  the  beginning 
of  the  movement  to  build  a  new  church  at  Tappan,  there  was 
a  sermon  preached  by  the  then  pastor,  the  Reverend  Mr.  Lan- 
sing, from  the  text:    "Is  it  time  for  you,  oh,  ye,  to  dwell  in 
your  ceiled  houses,  and  this  house  of  God  to  lie  waste?  "     The 
congregation  felt  it  was  not  time,  and  the  church  was  built  im- 
mediately thereafter.     Historically  the  Tappan  ch  urch  has  little 
of  interest.     The  most  famous  event  which  ever  occurred  in  the 
town  was  the  execution  of  Major  Andre  during  the  Revolutionary 
War,  when  Washington's  headquarters  were  in  the  village. 

The  First  Presbyterian  Church  at  Sag  Harbor,  Long  Island, 
should  not  properly  be  included  in  this  volume  at  all,  since 
it  is  not  Colonial,  nor  has  it  venerable  historic  associations, 
but  as  it  is  one  of  the  very,  very  few  of  the  surviving  monu- 
ments of  the  brief  "Egyptian  Revival,'*  and  as  it  is  the  only 
church  in  the  writer's  knowledge  which  was  executed  in  that 
style,  it  seems  worth  while  including  as  a  curiosity,  if  for  no 


r? 


THE    FIRST    REFORMED    CHURCH,    NEW    BRUNSWICK,    N.    J. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  171 

other  reason;  it  is, besides,  a  tremendously  clever  piece  of  design 
—  a  tour  de  force  of  such  amazing  ingenuity  that  the  tempta- 
tion to  illustrate  it  is  too  strong  to  be  resisted.  The  nineteenth 
century  was  remarkable  for  its  ill-digested  bites  of  historic 
architectural  plums,  and,  curiously  enough,  while  the  Egyptian 
Revival  enjoyed  but  the  briefest  possible  vogue,  and  the  style 
itself  would  seem  to  be  one  of  the  last  adapted  to  American 
needs  and  conditions,  the  few  pieces  of  design  which  were  exe- 
cuted in  it  were  really  of  quite  extraordinary  merit.  One 
need  only  recall  the  Bryant  Park  Reservoir,  the  Essex  County 
Court  House  at  Newark,  and  the  old  Tombs  Prison,  all  three 
now  destroyed,  to  reahze  that  these  were  all  excellent  pieces 
of  design  and  of  curious  suitability  to  their  purposes.  None 
of  them,  of  course,  presented  so  diflScult  a  problem  as  this 
church,  since  the  Egyptians  were  practically  without  towers, 
and  completely  without  spires,  and  the  designer  of  this  church 
was  forced  to  combine  Neo-Grec  motives  into  a  spire  of 
pseudo-Colonial  shape  and  attach  it  to  the  pair  of  Egyp- 
tian pylons  which  formed  the  fagade.  It  is  perhaps  the 
most  extraordinary  combination  ever  attempted,  except  in 
fun,  but  the  result  is  very  far  from  being  a  joke,  and  even 
approximates  good  architecture,  since  the  proportions  are 
admirable  and  the  detail  interesting.  The  interior  is  hard, 
dry  Greek  Revival,  but  rather  well  proportioned,  and  with 
the  motives  even  better  adapted  to  their  locations  than  in 
many  better  designed  structures. 


172  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

The  oldest  Presbyterian  Church  at  Sag  Harbor  was  built 
on  the  site  of  the  present  building  in  1817,  and  was  a  small, 
temporary  structure;  the  congregation  at  once  began  to 
collect  material  for  a  new  and  larger  building,  which  was 
stored  on  the  church  property  surrounding  the  church.  All 
of  this  stored  material  and  the  old  church  were  destroyed 
together  by  what  is  known  in  the  village  history  as  *'The 
Great  Fire."  The  present  edifice  was  built  in  1843-44,  and 
no  architect  properly  so-called  was  employed,  but  the  design 
was  a  result  of  the  serious  efforts  of  four  men  employed 
on  the  building.  Mr.  Bellows  was  the  builder  in  charge,  and 
was  still  living  in  1912.  The  interior  was  altered  from  time 
to  time  between  1843-1910,  but  as  the  alterations  were  made,  the 
material  —  with  unusual  thoughtf ulness  —  was  not  destroyed, 
but  was  stored  in  the  cellar,  and  in  1910  the  church  was  put 
back  in  its  original  condition,  the  old  material  being  used,  so 
that  at  present  the  entire  building  is  as  originally  constructed, 
except  that  the  tower  is  shingled  instead  of  being  clapboarded. 
Curiously  enough  in  its  final  form  the  spirit  of  the  design  re- 
sembles not  so  much  traditional  American  architecture  as  the 
decadent  Grseco-Egyptian,  which  we  find  in  certain  buildings 
of  Pompeii,  which  were  probably  totally  unknown  to  the 
designers,  and  it  is  to  an  architect  especially  a  matter  of 
interest  to  find  in  America  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  a  result  similar  to  that  found  in  the  Roman  town  in 
the  first  century,  and  produced  through  nearly  the  same 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  173 

causes,  namely  —  the  decadent  combination  of  two  foreign 
forms  not  thoroughly  understood  by  the  designers  who  em- 
ployed them. 

This  concludes  the  list  of  churches  which  have  been  thought 
worth  preservation  through  the  medium  of  photographs  or 
of  brief  historical  and  descriptive  sketches,  and  while  there 
may  be,  and  very  probably  are,  other  churches  worthy  of 
inclusion  in  this  series,  very  diligent  search  on  the  part  of  the 
writer  has  failed  to  reveal  them.  As  to  the  churches  which 
have  been  illustrated,  the  writer  feels  that  the  reasons  for  the 
use  of  certain  of  them  can  be  disputed,  for  he  realizes  that 
the  individual  viewpoints  of  different  men  cover  a  wide  range, 
but  he  has  been  encouraged  to  begin  and  proceed  with  this 
work  by  certain  of  his  fellow-architects  who  have  expressed 
themselves  as  strong  believers  in  the  utility  of  the  volume 
both  to  designers  and  to  those  who  are  interested  in  the 
formative  stage  of  American  civilization. 


CHAPTER  X 

ARCHITECTURAL    DEVELOPMENT    AS    ILLUSTRATED    IN 
THE    CHURCHES 

IF  the  reader  feels  that  he  has  cause  to  complain  that  the 
historical  side  of  these  churches  has  been  too  lightly  dealt 
with  and  that  the  architectural  side  has  been  dwelt  upon  too 
long  he  should  remember  that  it  is  the  buildings  themselves 
that  are  under  discussion  rather  than  the  congregations  which 
built  them  and  which  they  continue  to  house.     Again,  the  his- 
tory of  each  denomination  in  the  United  States  has  been  very 
fully  and  carefully  written,  and  the  writer,  therefore,  has  only 
selected  such  incidents  from  ecclesiastical  histories  as  possess 
interest  to  the  general  reader,  and  which  have  some  bearing 
through  the  forms  of  worship  upon  the  buildings  in  which  these 
forms  of  worship  were  conducted.     On  the  other  hand,  there 
has  been  no  attempt,  so  far  as  the  writer  knows,  to  compose  a 
history  of  American  architecture,  although  a  number  of  books 
have  been  published  which  have  touched  upon  certain  of  its 
aspects,  and  as  the  early  American  churches  constitute  the 
largest  group  of  monuments  of  a  single  class  which  remain  from 
the  early  years  of  our  nation,  and  as  it  was  upon  the  churches 
that  our  early  builders  and  architects  lavished  their  highest 
powers  of  design,  the  history  of  the  early  American  churches 

174 


THE    OLD    DUTCH    CHURCH,    TAPPAN,    N.    J. 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  175 

will  in  itself  illustrate  pretty  completely  the  development  of 
our  first  national  style. 

Now,  let  it  not  be  thought  that  this  early  architecture  of  ours 
is  by  any  means  a  negligible  factor  in  the  world's  art  develop- 
ment. Its  influence  upon  American  art  to-day  is  potent  and 
far-reaching,  and  has  even  been  reflected  back  upon  the  Euro- 
pean styles,  so  that  we  continually  find  in  modern  European 
work  traces  of  design  which  originated  in  the  United  States 
during  the  eighteenth  century.  Architectural  writers  both  of 
our  own  country  and  of  Europe  have  been  too  inclined  to  pass 
over  the  Colonial  (or  so-called  American  Georgian)  architecture 
as  but  a  pale  and  poor  imitation  of  the  European  styles  which 
existed  concurrently  with  it,  and  they  have  expressed  a  con- 
temptuous surprise  that  in  a  new  country  architectural  de- 
signers should  have  been  content  to  follow  precedents  estab- 
hshed  in  the  Old  World  without  endeavoring  to  develop  an 
original  style.  With  these  views  the  writer  cannot  sympa- 
thize, since  if  by  an  "original  style"  of  architecture  is  meant  one 
which  bears  no  traces  or  reminiscences  of  the  Greek  or  Gothic, 
American  designers  would  have  had  to  accomplish  a  feat  un- 
precedented in  the  history  of  art;  they  would  have  had  to  forget 
two  thousand  years  of  inherited  tradition,  and  begun  where  the 
cave-dwellers  of  Europe  began  ages  ago;  since  while  a  single 
memory  of  the  mechanical  improvements  which  have  been 
made  since  the  days  of  the  cave-dwellers  persisted,  the  forms 
in  which  these  were  expressed  would  likewise  have  persisted. 


176  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

Had  we  been  red  Indians  we  might  have  developed  an  autoch- 
thonous architecture,  as  they  did,  but  we  were  transplanted 
Europeans,  as  incapable  of  forgetting  the  traditions  of  our 
races  as  were  those  Europeans  who  never  left  their  native  lands. 

Yet,  in  the  only  sense  in  which  it  was  possible  for  us  to 
develop  a  new  style,  such  a  style  was  at  once  developed.  The 
Colonial  architecture  of  America  is  as  different  from  Enghsh 
Georgian  as  the  Georgian  is  from  the  Italian  styles  of  the  same 
period.  We  use,  it  is  true,  the  Classic  order  as  its  basis.  We 
could  not  have  done  otherwise,  for  there  must  be  something  in 
the  Classic  order  inherently  appropriate  to  the  decoration  and 
construction  of  buildings  of  all  classes  to  have  compelled 
twenty  centuries  of  architects  to  make  it  the  dominant  factor 
in  their  designs,  and  as  the  difference  between  the  great  schools 
of  Greece  and  Rome  and  of  the  Renaissance  consists, 
namely,  in  the  variation  of  methods  of  using  the  order,  so 
American  Colonial  may  be  distinguished  from  other  historical 
schools  by  the  manner  of  its  use. 

Our  early  settlers  did  not  possess  the  means  sufficient  to  con- 
struct buildings  of  large  size  and  of  costly  materials,  but  in 
the  small  structures  which  they  erected,  and  especially  in  the 
churches,  we  find  the  national  style  clearly  differentiated 
from  that  of  every  country  of  Europe,  and  of  no  less  merit. 
Influenced,  it  certainly  was,  by  the  racial  characteristics  of  its 
users,  yet  it  was  essentially  a  national  style,  since  while  the 
Dutch  churches  of  New  Jersey,  the  Lutheran  churches  of 


THE    FIRST    PRESBYTERIAN    CHURCH,    SAG    HARBOR,    NEW    YORK 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  177 

Pennsylvania,  and  the  English  churches  of  New  England  have 
marked  points  of  difference  from  each  other,  they  still  possess 
points  of  resemblance  far  more  marked  than  those  differences, 
and  are  easily  to  be  distinguished  from  the  work  of  any  Euro- 
pean country.  The  characteristic  of  the  style  is  (by  com- 
parison with  European  work  of  the  same  period)  a  greater 
dependence  upon  hne  and  mass  than  upon  ornament,  which 
was  sparingly  introduced  and  never  permitted  to  dominate. 
The  best  American  architecture  of  to-day  has  not  dissimilar 
characteristics,  and,  wherever  the  early  churches  can  be  criti- 
cised, it  is  invariably  on  the  ground  of  over-severity  and  ex- 
tenuation of  the  hne,  and  never  because  of  vulgarity  and 
ostentation.  Compare  them,  for  example,  with  the  Barocque 
churches  of  Europe  which  were  erected  at  the  same  time,  and 
you  will  find  them  to  shine  out  like  the  water  of  a  mountain 
brook  in  a  muddy  river. 

It  has  lately  become  the  fashion,  especially  in  the  West,  to 
criticise  American  architecture  for  its  dependence  upon  the 
Classic  orders,  and  to  assert,  with  considerable  vigor  and  some 
semblance  of  good  reasoning,  that  there  has  been  recently 
developed  a  national  style  which  the  Westerners  choose  to  call 
the  "style  of  the  Western  plains."  This  architecture  has  not 
met  with  general  acceptance  in  the  East  because  it  has  re- 
jected, as  far  as  possible,  the  Classic  order,  but  the  men  who 
work  in  this  style  appear  to  beheve  that  it  is  the  American 
school  for  which  we  have  been  so  long  hoping,  forgetting,  ap- 


178  EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES 

parently,  that  it  is  only  a  part  of  the  same  art  movement  which 
is  called  the  modern  German  style  in  Germany,  and  Art  Nou- 
veau  in  France  and  Austria.  Had  our  ancestors  even  con- 
sidered the  desirability  of  discarding  the  Classic  order,  they 
would  never  have  designed  along  these  lines,  because  the  "style 
of  the  Western  plains"  is  an  evolution,  as  has  been  every  other 
art  movement  of  the  least  importance,  and  a  hundred  years 
ago  the  forces  which  produced  it  did  not  exist.  No  group  of 
men  can  sit  down  and,  by  a  mere  process  of  willing,  evolve  a 
new  thing.  They  can  only  hope  to  change  the  old  motives  in 
accordance  with  their  personal  characteristics  and  the  view- 
point of  their  times.  Thus  far,  at  least,  the  architects  of  the 
Colonial  period  did  progress,  since  they  showed  a  surprising 
ingenuity  in  the  use  and  application  of  those  architectural 
elements  and  forms  which  were  known  to  them.  Our  early 
American  buildings,  and  the  text-books  of  the  carpenters  who 
constructed  them,  are  filled  with  detail  both  animated  and 
vigorous,  variants  of  the  Classic  order  before  unheard  of,  and 
which  yet  somehow  preserve  the  vital  constructive  quahties 
of  the  order,  although  the  unessential  features  have  been 
treated  with  a  freedom  which  is  outside  the  bent  of  the  present 
generation.  We  are,  for  one  thing,  too  well  trained;  in  our 
school  days  we  acquired  a  reverence  for  Vignola  which  we 
hardly  accord  to  the  Bible,  and  the  use  of  the  Corinthian  order 
with  triglyphs  and  mutules  —  not  infrequent  in  Colonial  work 
— •  is  now  regarded  as  much  an  offence  against  taste  as  it  is  an 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  179 

indication  of  ignorance.  To  the  architects  of  the  Colonial 
days  triglyphs  had  no  God-given  union  with  the  Doric  column 
which  it  behooved  no  man  to  sunder.  They  regarded  any 
entablature  as  applicable  (with  the  necessary  changes  in  pro- 
portion) to  any  column,  and  proceeded  to  decorate  their  friezes 
and  soffits  as  it  pleased  them  and  as  agreed  with  their  sense  of 
the  appropriate,  regardless  of  the  defined  propriety  of  Vignola. 
It  is  not  infrequent  to  find  in  Colonial  buildings  mutules  with 
holes  bored  in  them  instead  of  pegs  projecting  from  them,  and 
sometimes  these  holes  are  arranged  so  as  to  form  amusing 
patterns  of  black  dots  on  the  bottoms  of  the  mutules.  To  the 
modern  architect  this  is  vicious  if  not  criminal,  and  he  con- 
tinues to  use  pegs  (or  guttse)  on  the  bottoms  of  the  mutules  as  if 
they  had  some  structural  significance  and  he  knew  what  it  was. 
Yet  the  very  origin  of  this  particular  form  of  decoration  of 
the  Doric  order  has  been  so  completely  lost  that  it  is  merely 
a  matter  of  conjecture,  although  evidently  a  development 
from  some  wooden  form.  The  Colonial  architects  were  indif- 
ferent as  to  its  origin,  and  Hkewise  indifferent  to  its  historic 
connection,  but  they  cared  very  much  for  its  possibilities  as 
a  decorative  treatment,  and  because  they  regarded  architec- 
tural forms  purely  from  an  aesthetic  point  of  view,  and  not  at 
all  from  a  traditional  one,  we  find  that  the  decorative  features 
of  Colonial  architecture  have  an  indubitable  quahty  of  fitness 
to  their  location  which  cannot  be  imitated  with  a  strict  regard 
to  tradition. 


180  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

There  has  been,  perhaps,  no  other  period  in  which  Classic 
forms  were  so  freely  used  as  in  the  Colonial  days,  except  by  the 
Greeks,  and  the  Greek  period  was  essentially  one  of  develop- 
ment when  no  fixed  canons  as  to  proportion  or  as  to  sequences 
of  mouldings  had  been  established.  Perhaps  something  of 
the  same  conditions  which  produced  the  excellence  of  the 
Greek  detail  was  operative  in  the  Colonial  times;  during  both 
periods  the  architects  were  compelled  to  invent  forms  of  de- 
tail because  there  were  not  a  suflScient  number  of  precedents 
at  hand  to  copy  from,  and  while  during  the  Colonial  period 
our  architects  freely  resorted  to  Europe  for  the  motifs  for  their 
buildings,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  they  possessed  meas- 
ured drawings  of  the  detail  with  suflBcient  exactness  to  follow, 
and  these  they  necessarily  devised  for  themselves.  We  have 
found,  for  example,  that  several  of  the  American  churches 
are  reported  to  have  been  copies  of  St.  Martin's-in-the-fields 
in  London,  and  that  St.  Philip's  Church  in  Charleston  was 
copied  from  a  church  of  the  Jesuits  in  Antwerp.  Had  we  not 
been  informed  that  these  were  precedents,  we  would  hardly 
have  guessed  that  this  was  the  fact,  so  great  are  the  differences 
in  both  detail  and  proportion,  the  composition  alone  being 
similar.  Their  designers  had  probably  only  poor  drawings  or 
bad  wood  cuts  to  follow,  which  in  themselves  gave  a  false  im- 
pression of  the  masses  of  the  old  churches;  besides  this,  as 
every  architect  knows,  it  is  very  difficult  to  copy  a  building 
with  any  degree  of  exactitude  from  a  perspective  drawing 


EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  181 

alone.  The  working  drawings  must  be  made  in  elevation, 
and  there  is  an  inevitable  tendency  to  copy  in  the  working 
drawings  and  direct  elevations  the  proportions  as  shown  in  the 
perspective,  without  due  allowance  for  the  effects  of  perspec- 
tive. Any  measured  drawing,  for  example,  of  a  spire,  will,  by 
comparison  with  a  photograph  of  the  same  spire,  appear  tre- 
mendously attenuated,  and  when  we  add  to  these  reasons  the 
personal  equation  of  the  designer,  who  will  instinctively  alter 
proportions  to  fit  his  own  sense  of  rectitude,  the  reasons  for 
the  development  in  the  American  school  are  to  some  degree 
comprehensible . 

The  indifference  to  tradition  manifested  throughout  the 
Colonial  period  is  apparent  in  even  the  earliest  of  the  remain- 
ing churches.  St.  Luke's  at  Smithfield,  for  example,  has 
pseudo-Classical  pediment  over  the  entrance  door  of  a  building 
otherwise  distinctly  reminiscent  of  the  Gothic,  and  from  that 
first  church,  on  through  the  succession  of  buildings  illustrated 
in  this  volume,  one  finds  a  happy  freedom  from  the  hampering 
limitations  of  tradition,  partly  forced,  since  the  American 
builder  could  not  run  around  the  corner  and  copy  a  cornice 
from  a  church  built  there  the  year  before  by  some  other  man; 
partly  instinctive,  since  the  inventive  faculty  in  the  Ameri- 
can people  is  so  dominant  as  to  be  almost  the  genius  of  our 
nation. 

As  in  architecture,  so  in  the  forms  they  used  for  worship  and 
in  the  government  of  their  churches  were  the  Colonials  forced 


182  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

to  think  for  themselves,  and  with  every  sect  which  has  gained 
a  foothold  in  the  United  States  do  we  find  the  same  ability 
and  wiUingness  to  strike  out  in  new  directions,  from  the 
"Americanism"  of  the  Catholic  Church  to  the  Hicksite  dogmas 
of  the  Quakers.  This  has  been  due  partly  to  circumstances 
and  partly  to  the  restless  and  unsatisfied  habit  of  mind  which 
brought  our  ancestors  to  America,  and  which  has  been  inherited 
from  them.  In  New  England,  as  long  as  the  Puritans  could 
get  ministers  ordained  by  the  Church  of  England  who  were 
wilHng  to  serve  in  Puritan  parishes  in  accordance  with  the 
dictates  of  these  parishes,  regardless  of  any  conflict  with  the 
parental  authority  of  the  church,  they  continued  to  seek  for 
them,  but  when  the  supply  was  exhausted  because  of  the  de- 
cline of  the  Puritan  movement  in  England,  they  invented  a 
new  ordination  of  their  own,  and  the  Congregational  method  of 
church  government  was  automatically  begun.  In  the  South, 
where  the  settlers  with  seeming  content  continued  to  draw 
their  ministers  from  the  Episcopal  Church  in  England,  they 
found  themselves  so  far  removed  in  point  of  space  and  time 
from  the  central  authorities  in  England  that  they  took  into 
their  own  hands  the  regulation  of  their  ecclesiastical  affairs  to 
a  degree  never  before  considered  in  England,  and  dominated 
the  ecclesiastic  government  by  the  civil  power.  This  was  not 
so  diflScult  as  on  its  face  it  appears  to  be,  since  while  in  England 
the  authorities  of  the  town  and  of  the  parish  were  distinct 
oflScers,  the  same  men  not  infrequently  held  both  positions, 


EARLY  AMERICAN   CHURCHES  183 

and  the  boundaries  of  the  town  and  parish  were  usually  co- 
terminous, and  while  in  New  England  the  boundaries,  the  title, 
and  the  officers  of  the  parish  ahke  became  extinct,  in  Virginia 
and  the  South  the  parish  and  the  parish  officers  became  the 
civil  authority  to  the  exclusion  of  the  town  and  its  officers. 

During  the  hundred  and  forty  years  that  have  elapsed  since 
the  Revolution  religious  sentiment  in  the  United  States  has 
been  by  no  means  dormant.  Many  new  sects  have  arisen, 
and  two  of  them  became  factors  to  be  reckoned  with  in  the 
social  and  political  life  of  the  nation.  We  refer,  of  course,  to 
the  Mormons  and  the  Christian  Scientists.  On  the  other  hand, 
with  the  upspringing  of  new  religions,  there  has  been  an  equally 
powerful  current  tending  to  consoHdate  the  older  sects  so  that 
the  differences  between  the  various  Protestant  sects,  and  even 
between  them  and  the  Catholic  Church,  are  to-day  rather  of 
the  letter  than  of  the  spirit,  and  there  is  at  the  present  time  a 
powerful  influence  at  work  tending  to  unite  the  various 
Protestant  denominations,  which  have  thus  far  been  deterred 
from  consolidation  only  by  minor  and  perhaps  unimportant 
questions  of  church  government  and  the  acceptance  of  the 
various  forms  of  ordination,  confirmation,  etc.,  by  some  of  the 
sects.  Eventually  such  a  union  must  be,  and  when  it  occurs 
and  all  the  churches  are  working  together  under  a  single  cove- 
nant, broad  enough  to  permit  differences  of  practice,  we  may 
look  for  the  early  American  churches  to  be  filled  again  with 
the  rehgious  fervor  which  caused  them  to  be  constructed.     To- 


184  EARLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES 

day  we  have  the  broad  spirit  of  charity  which  was  to  them 
only  a  form  of  words,  and  which  was,  nevertheless,  often  beau- 
tifully expressed  in  their  convenants,  one  of  which  required 
only  that  all  members  of  the  church  should  "have  faith  in  the 
saving  mercy  of  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord." 


APPENDIX 

TABLE  OF  EAHLY  AMERICAN  CHURCHES  IN  CHRONOLOGICAL  ORDER 

Churches  marked  o  are  illustrated 
Dates  given  are  those  of  the  commencement  of  the  structures. 

DATE  TITLE  ARCHITECT  MATERIALS      CHAP. 

01632     St.  Luke's,  Smithfield,  Va.      Joseph  Bridger  Brick  II 

0I68I     "Ship    Meeting    House", 

Hingham,  Mass.  .  .  Wood  II 

1692    Quaker     Meeting     House, 

Flushing,  N.  Y.    .     .     .  Wood  V 

01697  "  Gloria  Dei,"  Philadelphia, 

Pa Brick  II 

01698  Trinity,  Wihnington,  Del.  Stone  II 
1698     Dutch  Reformed   Church, 

Oakland,  N.J.      .     .     .  Stone  V 

0I7OO     St.  Peter's,  New  Kent  Co., 

Va Will  Hughes  Brick  II 

1706     Yeocomico  Church,  West- 
moreland Co.,  Va.  .  Brick         IV 

ol710     Bruton     Parish     Church, 

Williamsburg,  Va.     .  Alex.  Spotswood  Brick  IV 

1714  St.  Michael's,  Marblehead, 

Mass Wood        III 

1715  St.  David's,  Radnor,  Pa.   .  Stone  V 
1721     Dutch  Reformed   Church, 

Wyckofif,N.  J.     .     .     .  Stone  V 

ol723     Old  North,  Boston,  Mass.  .     William  Price  Brick         III 

ol726    Trinity, Newport, R.  I..     .     Harrison  (?)  Wood        HI 

185 


186  APPENDIX 

DATE  TITLE  ABCBITSCT 

01726  Dutch   Reformed   Church, 

Hackeusack,  N.  J. 
1726     First  Church,  Saybrook,  Ct. 

01727  Christ    Church,    Philadel- 

phia, Pa John  Kearsley 

01730  Old  South,  Boston,  Mass.  .     Robert  Twelves 

01731  Tennent  Church,  Freehold, 

N.J 

1732  Christ  Church,  Lancaster, 
Va 

1734  St.  Thomas,  Bath,  N.  C.  . 
ol735     St.  Paul's,  Edenton,  N.  C.  . 

1737  Blandford  Church,  Peters- 
burg, Va Thos.  Ravenscroft 

1739     St.  Paul's,  Norfolk,  Va.      . 

1741     St.  John's,  Richmond,  Va. 

1748  St.  George's,  Schenectady, 
N.Y 

01752  St.   Michael's,   Charleston, 

S.  C Gibson 

01753  King's      Chapel,      Boston, 

Mass Peter  Harrison 

ol756     St.    Paul's    Chapel,    New 

York,  N.  Y.  ...     Macbean 

01758     St.    Peter's,    Philadelphia, 

Pa Samuel  Rhodes 

1761     Christ  Church,  Cambridge, 

Mass.         .      .      .      .      .     Peter  Harrison 

ol761     Holy    Trinity,    Lancaster, 
Pa 

1761  Meeting  House,  Wethers- 
field,  Ct 

01763  First  Church,  Dedham, 
Mass.  .... 


IfATBRIALS 

CHAP. 

Stone 

V 

Wood 

HI 

Brick 

V 

Brick 

III 

Wood 


Brick 

IV 

Brick 

IV 

Brick 

TV 

Brick 

IV 

Brick 

IV 

Wood 

IV 

Stone 

V 

Stucco 

IV 

Stone 

III 

Stone 

V 

Brick 

V 

Stone 

III 

Brick 

V 

Wood 

III 

Wood 

III 

APPENDIX 

DATE  TITLE  ABCHITBOT 

01764  St.    Paul's    Church,    East 

Chester,  N.Y.     .      .      . 

01765  Christ  Church,  Alexandria, 

Va James  Wren 

1767     Meeting      House,      Long- 
Meadow,  Mass.    . 
ol769    Pohick  Church,  Va.  .     George  Washington 

1770     Palatine  Church,  Mohawk 

Valley 

ol771     Meeting  House,  Farming- 
ton,  Ct Judah  Woodruflf 

1775     Jewish    Synagogue,    New- 
port, R.  I Peter  Harrison 

ol775     First  Baptist,  Providence, 

R.  I Joseph  Brown 

01787  First  Presbyterian,  Newark, 

N.J 

1787  First  Church,  Enfield,  Mass. 

1788  Congregational        Church, 

Southampton,  Mass. 

01788  Home    Moravian    Church, 

Winston-Salem,  N.  C.     . 

1789  First   Presbyterian,    Eliza- 

beth, N.  J 

ol791     First  Presbyterian,  Spring- 
field, N.  J 

1794     Meeting  House,  East  Had- 

dam,  Ct 

ol795     St.Mark's,  New  York,  N.Y. 
1799     Meeting       House,       West 
Springfield,  Mass. 

01800  Independent  Presbyterian, 

Savannah,  Ga.  .     Jay  (?) 

01801  First  Reformed,  Schraalen- 

berg  N.  J 


187 

\TEBIALS 

CHAP. 

Stone 

V 

Brick 

IV 

Wood 

ni 

Brick 

IV 

Stone 

V 

Wood 

III 

Wood 

III 

Wood 

III 

Stone 

V 

Wood 

III 

Wood 

III 

Brick 

IV 

Stone 

V 

Wood 

V 

Wood 

III 

Stone 

V 

Wood 

III 

Marble 

VIII 

Stone 

IX 

188  APPENDIX 

DATE  TITLB  ABCHITEOT 

1805     Moravian    Church,    Beth- 
lehem, Pa 

ol805     Trinity    Church,    Newark, 
N.J 

01805  Congregational       Church, 

Lenox  Mass. 

01806  First  Church,  Hartford,  Ct.     Daniel  Wadsworth 

01806  First  Church,  Bennington,  t^n""^ 

Vt Asher  Benjamin 

01807  Beneficent,  Providence,  R.I.    John  Green 
0I8O7    St.    John's    Chapel,    New 

York,  N.Y.         .     .     .     John  McComb 
0I8O7    St.     John's,     Portsmouth, 
N.H 

01809  Park  Street,  Boston,  Mass.      Peter  Banner 

01810  Meeting  House,  Lancaster, 

Mass Charles  Bullfinch 

1811  New  North  Church,  Bos- 

ton, Mass Charles  Bullfinch 

0I8I2    Monumental  Church,  Rich- 
mond, Va Robert  Mills 

0I8I2    Centre  Church,  New  Haven, 

Ct IthielTown 

0I8I2    North  Church,  New  Haven, 

Ct David  Hoadly 

1812  Trinity       Church,       New 

Haven,  Ct David  Hoadly 

0I8I2    Fh-st    Reformed    Church, 
New  Brunswick,  N.  J.    . 

01815  First  Church,  Lyme,  Ct.    . 

01816  Hill    Church,    Dorchester, 

Mass 

0I8I8     First   Church,   Springfield, 

Mass Isaac  Damon 


liATEBIAIA       CHAP. 


Brick 

IX 

Stone 

IX 

Wood 

VII 

Wood 

VI 

Wood 

VII 

Wood 

vn 

Stone         IX 


Brick 

VII 

Brick 

VII 

Brick 

VII 

Wood 

VII 

Stone 

vm 

Brick 

VI 

Brick 

VI 

Brick 

VI 

Stone 

IX 

Wood 

VI 

Wood 

VII 

Wood 

vn 

APPENDIX  189 

DATE  TITLE  ABCHITBCT  B4ATEBIALS       CHAP. 

ol819     Meeting  House,  East  Avon, 

Ct Wood         VI 

01819  St.  Paul's,  Augusta,  Ga.      .  Brick      VIII 

01820  Meeting      House,      Ware, 

Mass Isaac  Damon  Wood       VII 

01824     First     Unitarian     Church, 

Deerfield,  Mass.  Isaac  Damon  (?)  Brick        VII 

01829    First  Church,  Guilford,  Ct.  Wood         VI 

1829     Second  Church,  Hartford, 

Ct Wood        VI 

01885     St.  Philip's,  Charieston, 

S.  C J.Hyde  Stucco    VIII 

01835     First  Church,  Tappan,  N.Y.    John  Haring  Brick         IX 

ol843    First  Presbyterian  Church, 

Sag  Harbor,  N.Y.     .     .     Bellows  (?)  Wood        IX 


THE  COUNTBT  LIFE  PBESa 
GABDEN  CITT,  N.  T. 


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